“It is not just that,” said Millicent, shamefacedly. “Only, seeing you unexpectedly gave me a pang. And then, being in the place he built—”
The older woman patted her hand soothingly. “I understand,” she said. “I’ve always understood. When—when you didn’t write after the very first, I knew it was because you couldn’t, not because you forgot. You were really made for each other, you two. I think I never saw two such radiant, happy creatures in the world. Ah, well!” she wiped a sudden dew from her glasses, “waiting’s hard, my dear, but it ends,—it ends.”
Millicent was hurt by the unbroken faith in her, by the unquestioning belief she could not share. She looked wistfully upon the shining, tearful eyes.
“It is very beautiful to think that,” she said, “but, dear Aunt Harriet, you are mistaken about me. I am going to tell you everything. I—I loved your nephew. I shall not love any one else. It happened to come to me in perfectness when I was young—love. But I live, I am well, I am alive to pleasure and pain. How shall I fill up my life but with the things that still matter to me?”
“You think of marrying, you mean?” Aunt Harriet’s voice was dry and harsh. “Well—I am sure Will would wish your happiness, and I—it would not be for me to object. Every day it is done, and very often rightly, I suppose; for money, for companionship, for the chance of self-development, women marry without love. I—I could only wish you happiness.”
“You—do not understand.”
“My dear,”—her voice softened again; something in the pallor and the quivering pain of the girl touched her,—“I do not mean to speak hardly to you. It seems to me like this: when it comes to piecing out a life that has been broken, as yours was—as mine was, my dear, as mine was—there are two ways of doing it. Either you keep your ideal of perfect love, and lead your poor every-day life of odds and ends, like mine, filling your days with the best scraps of pleasure or usefulness you may, or you give up your ideal of perfect love and marry, and have your home and your children and your rounded outward life. There is, maybe, no question of higher or lower. Each one of us does what her nature bids her. I had always thought of you as one who—But it is not for me to judge.”
Her voice was gentle, and she did not look at Millicent. Her eyes seemed to pierce the canvas on the opposite wall and the hangings and the stones behind it, and to see a far image of souls in the struggle of choice. The woman beside her sat silent, her thoughts with the idealists—the men who gave up the comfort of their firesides, the gain of their occupations, and followed whither the vision led; the woman whose home was built upon love and who would see only infamy in houses founded otherwise; the poor soul beside her, stronger in courage, more aspiring in thought, than she, with all her delicacies, her refinements of taste. The ideal had led them all—the ideal, as it had once shone for her and for him whose spirit had informed and beautified the spot where she sat and made her choice.
“Aunt Harriet,” she said, and her face was like the sudden flashing of stars between torn clouds,—“Aunt Harriet—” She could not utter the decision in words. “May I come to see you—and learn something from you?”
Miss Hayter looked. There was no need to question. No knight ever rose from his accolade with a face more glorified than Millicent’s when she silently dedicated herself to the shining company of those who keep unsullied the early vision.