“Under influences of this kind my ideals and purposes gradually changed. I came to believe sincerely that my duty, as she said, was to develop and perfect my gifts, and that the pangs I should feel in renouncing Godfrey would be small in comparison with the lifelong regret consequent upon the burial of my talents.
“On my father’s death in my last college year, two courses lay open to me, one, marriage to Godfrey, the other, freedom to pursue my studies in foreign universities and fit myself for a career. And although I cared for Godfrey, and knew the gallant, unselfish struggle he was making and the need of me in his daily life, I chose self instead of him, freedom instead of love, a career instead of a life. He was too wise to reproach me; he only said, ‘Some day, Emily, the woman’s heart in you will awake, and you will know your need of me.’
“I hurried abroad, and threw myself absorbingly into study. Six years passed almost with the swiftness of as many months; I had the coveted degrees, the sense of power marked success brings, and at twenty-eight I was called home to fill an important professorship. During this time I kept up a correspondence with Godfrey. I said to myself I had a right to his friendship, though I stifled as weakness any regrets or longings for him and the eagerness I felt to see him again.”
Drawn by F. R. Gruger. Half-tone plate engraved by R. C. Collins
“DOSIA LISTENED SILENTLY, A LINE OF PAINFUL THOUGHT IN HER FOREHEAD”
“The first news I received on the landing of the ship was that of his sudden death. It came as a shock—a shock the nature of which I did not comprehend, however, so quickly was it overlaid by the noise and excitement of my life, the glow of instant success, the thrill of power, the adulation of thousands of women. In such a swift and glittering current did my life sweep on during the ensuing years that I was thirty-five before I realized the shallowness of it, knew that I had not a real tie in the world, saw that I was poor, empty, selfish, and, above all, horribly alone, and that not my life alone, but my art, was starved and barren; for how could I, who had never known the elemental emotions of my kind, hope to touch with my pen the quick of feeling? Here, too, in saving my life, I had lost it.
“I awoke to suffering, to hunger, to knowledge that I had sold my birthright. In other words, I knew at last that I was a woman, with a woman’s deep and eternal needs. Love, home, children,—ties that grapple one to life, experiences that, whether in the white flame of joy or the seven-times heated furnace of suffering, weld one with the race,—these inalienable rights of woman I awoke to desire and crave. Too late, too late! For although even then I might have ended the mere solitude,—other men beside Godfrey have wanted me,—I knew that he alone was my mate, and, knowing it, nothing but loyalty was possible. You remember the Scarborough motto, ‘Keep Troth.’ I had broken it with him living; I would keep it with him dead.
“But, oh, the loneliness, the detachment, the need of something vital in my days, of some creature to live for and call my own! If I had had the man of my love for even a short while, and, dying, he had left me a child, how different all would have been! Let them say what they will, the deepest, most fundamental craving of every woman’s heart is for children of her own; nothing else fulfils or satisfies. Missing this, we only half live in our youth and not at all in our age. Knowing my great need, I have many times considered the adoption of a child; but in every case a selfish fastidiousness has held me back.
“When I heard of Emily, a child of my own blood, and already bearing my name, my thoughts turned at once to her; when I saw her, small embodiment that she is of the dignity and simplicity of our race, I knew she was the one thing necessary. Everything in her appealed. She drew me out of myself, warmed my cold heart; her admiration was like wine to me; my very flesh rejoiced at her touch. With her to love and be loved by, I could now set up the long-desired home. In my busy plans, my happy absorption, my belief that blessing was at last to crown my days, I did not even think of your refusal!”