They talked quietly, for a while about Jimmie's affairs, the pilgrimage through southern France and northern Italy, his illness, his work. His poverty Aline was too proud to mention.
“And you, my dear?” asked Norma, kindly.
“I?”
“What about yourself? You are not looking as happy as you were. My dear child,” she said, bending forward earnestly, “do you know that no one has ever come to me with their troubles in all my life—not once. I'm beginning to feel I should be happier if some one did. You have had yours—-I have heard just a little. You see we all have them and we might help each other.”
“You have no troubles, Miss Hardacre,” said Aline, touched. “You are going to be married in a week's time.”
“And you?”
“Never,” said Aline. “Never.”
Suddenly she poured her disastrous little love-story into Norma's ears. It was a wonderful new comfort to the child, this tender magic of the womanly sympathy. Oh! she loved him, of course she loved him, and he loved her; that was the piteous part of it. If Miss Hardacre only knew what it was to have the heart-ache! It was dreadful. And there was no hope.
“And is that all?” asked Norma, when she had lowered the curtain on her tragedy. “You are eating out your heart for him and won't see him just because he won't believe in Jimmie? Listen. I feel sure that he will soon believe in Jimmie. He must. And then you'll be entirely happy.”
When the girl's grateful arms suddenly flung themselves about her, Norma was further on the road to happiness than she had ever travelled before. She yielded herself to the moment's exquisite charm. Behind her whirled a tumult of longing, shame, struggling faith, nameless suspicion. Before her loomed a shivering dread. The actual moment was an isle of enchanted peace.