“It wasn’t any one’s fault,” said the girl. “If I had not been so unhappy, it might have been different.”
“Oh, Peace!”
“But I had no heart for it. And now my life must go on just as it is. I have thought it all out. I thought that some time you might tell me—what you have—or different—and I tried to think what I ought to do. I shall never care for any one else; I shall never get married. Don’t think I shall be unhappy! I can take good care of myself, and Jenny and I will not be lonesome together. Even if we don’t always live together—still, I can always make myself a home. I’m not afraid to be an old maid. There is work in the world for me to do, and I can do it. Is it so strange I should be saying this?”
“No, no. It’s right.”
“I suppose that most of the girls you know wouldn’t do it. But I have been brought up differently. In the Family they did not think that marriage was always the best thing; and when I saw how Jenny and Ansel—I don’t mean that it would ever have been like that! But I don’t wish you to think that life will be hard or unhappy for me. And you—you will find somebody that you can feel towards as you did towards that first girl.”
“Never! I shall never care for any one again!” he cried. At the bottom of his heart there was a relief which he tried to ignore, though he could not deny himself a sense of the unique literary value of the situation. It was from a consciousness of this relief that he asked, “And what do you think of me, Peace? Do you blame me?”
“Blame you? How? For my having changed?”
“I feel to blame,” said the young man. “How shall we do, now? Shall I come to see you when I return?”
“Yes. But we won’t speak of this again.”
“Shall you tell Mrs. Denton?”