Susan, I try not to be little and jealous, but when you
said 'Harry's wife' so carelessly just now it brought a lump to my
throat."

"He will marry some day, darling, and you might as well accustom
yourself to the thought."

"I know, and I want him to do it. I shall love his wife as if she were
my daughter--but--but it seems to me at this minute as if I could not
bear it!"

The grey twilight, entering through the high window above her head,
enveloped her as tenderly as if it were the atmosphere of those romantic
early eighties to which she belonged. The small aristocratic head, with
its quaint old-fashioned clusters of curls on the temples, the delicate
stooping figure, a little bent in the chest, the whole pensive,
exquisite personality which expressed itself in that manner of gentle
self-effacement--these things spoke to Susan's heart, through the
softness of the dusk, with all the touching appeal of the past. It was
as if the inscrutable enigma of time waited there, shrouded in mystery,
for a solution which would make clear the meaning of the blighted
promises of life. She saw herself and Virginia on that May afternoon
twenty-five years ago, standing with eager hearts on the edge of the
future; she saw them waiting, with breathless, expectant lips, for the
miracle that must happen! Well, the miracle had happened, and like the
majority of miracles, it had descended in the act of occurrence from the
zone of the miraculous into the region of the ordinary. This was life,
and looking back from middle-age, she felt no impulse to regret the
rapturous certainties of youth. Experience, though it contained an
inevitable pang, was better than ignorance. It was good to have been
young; it was good to be middle-aged; and it would be good to be old.
For she was one of those who loved life, not because it was beautiful,
but because it was life.

"I must go," said Virginia, rising in the aimless way of a person who is
not moving toward a definite object.

"Stay and have supper with us, Jinny. John Henry will take you home
afterward."

"I can't, dear. The--the servants are expecting me."

She kissed Susan on the cheek, and taking up her little black silk bag,
turned to the door.

"Jinny, if I come by for you to-morrow, will you go with me to a board
meeting or two? Couldn't you possibly take an interest in some charity?"
It was a desperate move, but at the moment she could think of no other
to make.

"Oh, I am interested