is plain you do not love him; or you never--"

The maid started back, her eyes ablaze.

"Not love him! Why--"

"That you do not love him truly; or you would never have wished this for
him.... Now listen to me!"

She raised an admonitory finger, complacent at last. But her speech was
not to be made at that time; for her daughter swiftly rose to her feet,
controlled at last by the shock of astonishment.

"Then I do not think you know what love is," she said softly. "To love
is to wish the other's highest good, as I understand it."

Mrs. Manners compressed her lips, as might a prophetess before a
prediction. But her daughter was beforehand with her again.

"That is the love of a Christian, at least," she said. Then she stooped,
took the letter from her mother's knees, and went out.

Mrs. Manners sat for a moment as her daughter left her. Then she
understood that her hour of superiority was gone with Marjorie's hour of
weakness; and she emitted a short laugh as she took her place again
behind the child she had borne.

II

It was a strange time that Marjorie had until two days later, when Robin
came and told her all, and how it had fallen out. For now, it seemed,
she walked on air; now in shoes of lead. When she was at her prayers
(which was pretty often just now), and at other times, when the air
lightened suddenly about her and the burdens of earth were lifted as if
another hand were put to them--at those times which every interior soul
experiences in a period of stress--why, then, all was glory, and she saw
Robin as transfigured and herself beneath him all but adoring. Little
visions came and went before her imagination. Robin riding, like some
knight on an adventure, to do Christ's work; Robin at the altar, in his
vestments; Robin absolving penitents--all in a rosy light of faith and
romance. She saw him even on the scaffold, undaunted and resolute, with
God's light on his face, and the crowd awed beneath him; she saw his
soul entering heaven, with all the harps ringing to meet him, and
eternity begun.... And then, at other times, when the heaviness came
down on her, as clouds upon the Derbyshire hills, she understood nothing
but that she had lost him; that he was not to be hers, but Another's;
that a loveless and empty life lay before her, and a womanhood that was
without its fruition. And it was this latter mood that fell on her,
swift and entire, when, looking out from her window a little before
dinner-t