“Yes.... I have been sorry that he couldn’t hear it——”
She stood before him, tall and white.
“I think you are like me,” she said in a moment. “I think you have something behind you that you do not tell—something that made you what you are—yet greater than you seem to yourself.... I would have told you while he was with us, but you know how the days passed and we could not hold our thoughts together. Then there were times when we could not even use our voices.... Do you know that the world is wonderful—that the thousands about us do not even dream how wonderful it is—how tremendous even miseries are? Sometimes I think that the tragedies we meet are our greatest hours.”
“You have met them,” he said, a part of her spirit almost. “I have seen them in your eyes. It gave me the sense of shelter with you and limitless understanding—-”
“I am thankful for that,” she whispered. “When we have understanding, we have everything. Those who in their childhood are made to suffer horribly are often the ones who reach understanding. Sometimes they suffer too much and become dulled and dumb. Sometimes in the very ache of their story, which can be so rarely told, they risk the telling to some one not ready. It aches so, as its stays and stays untold. Oh, the whole world craves understanding, and yet if we tell our story to one who is not ready—we hurt them and ourselves, and add unto our misery. There are moments set apart in life in which one finds understanding, but the world presses in the next day, and the story does not look so well. The spirit of it fades and the actions do not seem pure when the spirit is out—so one loses a loved friend. Oh, I am talking vaguely. It is not my way to talk vaguely—but to-night—it is like a division of roads, and a story is to be told—-”
“Do you think the story will diminish in my mind to-morrow?” he asked.
“No—not you. I have seen you through the sunlight and the dark looking into my eyes for it. If I thought it would diminish in your mind—yes, I would tell it just the same. It must be told—but life would not be the same. Even this, our little stone cot, would not be the same. I should have to become harder and harder to hold—to follow the Gleam——
“... I shall be Olga in the rest of the story,” she was saying. “For I am Olga.... The truth is, I have no other name. There is one that I used, and another that I formerly used—but they are not mine. You shall see.... My father prospered with the sheep-raising, and slowly on the long road that you have seen, houses came one by one, until at last there was a village about us. My father was like the village father, and my mother the source of its wisdom in doctoring and maternal affairs—she had learned by bringing forth. But I was not of them—they all saw that. The coming of plenty, the coming of the people, the coming of men to woo my sisters, and the maidens my brothers brought for us to see, before they took them quite away—none of these things were so real to me as the coming of my Guest when I was such a little girl. And none remembered that—not even my mother. Until I ceased to speak of it, they tried to make me think it was a dream. But I knew that rapture. It had changed me. I was always to search for it again. I was always looking for another such night—for that afterglow again. I was the last child and the silent one.
“But all that had to do with children was intimate and wonderful to me.... I remember once when we were all girls at home together, and they were talking—each of what she should have for her treasure from the household—one walnut, one silver, one an inlaid desk—and they turned to me laughingly, for I was not consulted as a rule, I said I wanted the little hickory cradle in an upper closet. It was one of those household days which girls remember.... All was happier then. The little cradle seemed like a casket in which jewels had come to my mother—seven times. We had all smiled at her first from that hickory cradle.... I went up stairs to look at it—a dim place full of life and messages to me. I was weak; my arms ached; and it was so dear that I dare not say that it was mine.... My father said the cradle must belong to the eldest girl.
“... I began to sense the terrible actuality of life through the mating of Lois, ten years older, with a countryman who came for her. For sisters, Lois and I had always been far apart, and this stranger who wished to marry her, had nothing to do with life as I dreamed it—a child of twelve. To many, Lois was the loveliest of us—large, calm, dark and quiet, very well, slow of speech, but quick to smile. Had you visited our house then, you would have remembered my father’s patriarchal air, the smile of Lois, and the maternity that brooded over us all. The rest you would get afterward—a variety of young people with different faults and attractions—I the grey one, last to be noted. Lois was given credit for more than she was. I do not love brain or power, but I seem to love courage. Lois had something to take the place of these—not courage—and no, not power nor brain. She had sensuousness and appetite.