I have been travelling in old lands--so
old that the history of each goes back until we can follow it with
our eyes no longer. But as far as we can see, we see this
sorrow--the sorrow of women who have wished to be first in the love
of the men they have loved. You, who read everything! Cannot you
see them standing all through history, the sad figures of girls who
have only asked for what they gave, love in its purity and its
singleness--have only asked that there should have been no other
before them? And cannot you see what a girl feels when she
consents to accept anything less,--that she is lowered to herself
from that time on,--has lost her own ideal of herself, as well as
her ideal of the man she loves? And cannot you see how she lowers
herself in his eyes also and ceases to be his ideal, through her
willingness to live with him on a lower plane? That is our wound.
That is our trouble and our sorrow: I have found it wherever I have
gone."
Long before she said this to him, she had questioned him closely
about Rowan. He withheld from her knowledge of some things which
he thought she could better bear to learn later and by degrees.
"I knew he was not well," she said; "I feared it might be worse.
Let me tell you this: no one knows him as I do. I must speak
plainly. First, there was his trouble; that shadowed for
him one ideal in his life. Then this drove him to a kind of
self-concealment; and that wounded another ideal--his love of
candor. Then he asked me to marry him, and he told me the truth
about himself and I turned him off. Then came the scandals that
tried to take away his good name, and I suppose have taken it away.
And then, through all this, were the sufferings he was causing
others around him, and the loss of his mother. I have lived
through all these things with him while I have been away, and I
understand; they sap life. I am going up to write to him now,
and will you post the letter to-night? I wish him to come to
see me at once, and our marriage must take place as soon as
possible--here--very quietly."
Rowan came the next afternoon. She was in the library; and he
went in and shut the door, and they were left alone.
Professor Hardage and Miss Anna sat in an upper room. He had no
book and she had no work; they were thinking only of the two
downstairs. And they spoke to each other in undertones, breaking
the silence with brief sentences, as persons speak when awaiting
news fr
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