d might
eventually work out into a plan. But thought would not come. Everywhere
there was the same beginning: a wild, burning desire to let Harold
understand her feeling towards him; to blot out, with the conviction of
trust and love, those bitter moments when in the madness of her
overstrung passion she had heaped such insult upon him. Everywhere the
same end: an impasse. He seemingly could not, would not, understand. She
knew now that the man had diffidences, forbearances, self-judgments and
self-denials which made for the suppression, in what he considered to be
her interest, of his own desires. This was tragedy indeed! Again and
again came back the remembrance of that bitter regret of her Aunt
Laetitia, which no happiness and no pain of her own had ever been able to
efface:

'To love; and be helpless! To wait, and wait, and wait; with heart all
aflame! To hope, and hope; till time seemed to have passed away, and all
the world to stand still on your hopeless misery! To know that a word
might open up Heaven; and yet to have to remain mute! To keep back the
glances that could enlighten, to modulate the tones that might betray! To
see all you hoped for passing away . . . !'

At last she seemed to understand the true force of pride; which has in it
a thousand forces of its own, positive, negative, restrainful. Oh! how
blind she had been! How little she had learned from the miseries that
the other woman whom she loved had suffered! How unsympathetic she had
been; how self-engrossed; how callous to the sensibilities of others! And
now to her, in her turn, had come the same suffering; the same galling of
the iron fetters of pride, and of convention which is its original
expression! Must it be that the very salt of youth must lose its savour,
before the joys of youth could be won! What, after all, was youth if out
of its own inherent power it must work its own destruction! If youth was
so, why not then trust the wisdom of age? If youth could not act for its
own redemption . . .

Here the rudiment of a thought struck her and changed the current of her
reason. A thought so winged with hope that she dared not even try to
complete it! . . . She thought, and thought till the long autumn shadows
fell around her. But the misty purpose had become real.

After dinner she went up alone to the mill. It was late for a visit, for
the Silver Lady kept early hours. But she found her friend as usual in
her room,