The two entered the drawing-room of the cottage, a cheerful room, whose graceful ornaments and profusion of flowers reflected the spirit of the lady of that peaceful abode.

Mary was forced by her hostess to lie back on the sofa; then Mrs. White sat down at the piano and began to play. It was a new piece of the German school, not cheerful exactly, certainly not melancholy, but full of a dreamy exaltation, suggestive of wanderings into some glorious realm. Indeed, it breathed all the rapture of religion.

Mary listened to it, feeling really happy as that n.o.ble harmony filled her soul, and for the moment drove away the shadow altogether.

She felt as if she were floating away into a shadowless heaven on that flood of music, and odour of flowers, and sunshine, that harmonising together pervaded all the room.

Then the music stopped.

After a pause Mrs. White said, "How do you like that, dear?"

"Oh, it is beautiful! too beautiful! It makes one so sad afterwards!"

"Do you find that? I don't at all."

"It seems to carry one away into some altogether impossible happiness, and when it is over one feels a regret for it. It is like waking out of a very pleasant dream."

"Poor dear, you won't talk like that when we have got you round. I'm a witch, and I foretell lots of happiness for your young life yet."

"You are always happy, Mrs. White."

"Of course I am. I should be a very discontented person if I was not, with everything to make me happy as I have."

Mary sighed. "And this woman," she thought, "has yet lost her husband, she has lost her love forever, and yet is happy! Could I ever be happy again if I lost mine?" She would have liked to have asked her a question yet dared not. She wondered whether the widow was happy because she knew she would meet her love in another world. "She could not be happy unless she believed this. How sweet must be the lives of such as this woman, so full of love and joy, which even death, they believe, cannot destroy.

How different," she thought, "from the agony, the despair, of those like me who know no world but this, who, when their loved ones are taken from them, lose them for ever. Ah, the hopelessness of it!" She felt that she was alone in the world, altogether cut out from the innocent joys and beliefs, for she had tasted the fruits of that poisonous tree of knowledge.

At last she said,

"Music generally raises one curious idea to me, not altogether sad but so strange. That last piece did not raise that idea though, but made me feel wonderfully glad while it lasted."

"And what is it that most music suggests to you then?" asked Mrs. White.

"It is very curious. It makes me feel as if I was all alone, far away somewhere, apart from other beings, and that all else was nothing but a series of pictures pa.s.sing by me. Did you ever read Greek plays, Mrs.

White?"

"Dear me! no! never. Why, you don't mean to say that Greek too was one of your studies?"

"No! but my aunt has read me translations of some of the Greek plays, and she explained to me the spirit of them. I often feel when I am listening to music as if I was the central figure of one of those old tragedies, a being hunted by a relentless fate; and sometimes it seems as if all that comes across me in life were incidents and characters in the play--characters subsidiary to mine, instruments of the Fate which is the key-note of the play, some knowingly, some unknowingly. Those who harm me will not be punished, those who are kind to me will not be rewarded; they are but the blind tools of the same Destiny. For in my play there is not, as in modern plays and novels, a retributive justice setting all things right at the end, but this pitiless Fate, careless of anyone. It is a fearful fancy and it seems to haunt me."

She said this in a languid dreamy way, beating the sides of the sofa nervously with her thin fingers as she spoke.

The idea was a common one of hers, and as she said, haunted her, with many others of like nature, born of that most pernicious habit of self-introspection which her recent education had inculcated.

"It's not a very healthy fancy, dear," said Mrs. White; "but we'll soon drive it away. Life is not a Greek drama if that's what a Greek drama is like. No human being stands alone in that way. There is no relentless Fate. We are all bound together by something better than that. I am sure I don't feel like a subsidiary character to you"--and she laughed merrily--"but as your dear friend who loves you very much."

"Oh, I wish I could believe all that you do, Mrs. White. I am altogether lost in a maze of contrary ideas. I don't seem to know what is right or wrong now in the least--since my illness. I am getting so puzzled about everything--" a little hysterical half-sob, half-laugh divided her sentences. "I don't think my head will ever get right again--when I try to think my brain gets quite sick and dizzy, and I don't know where I am."

"Poor little girl! but you must not think at all, at present; you've got to please your friends by being quiet and allowing them to get you well again."

"I wish I was good and unselfish like you, dear Mrs. White."

"Nonsense, child--I am not more unselfish than other people. What greater pleasure is there than to make others happy? It's not so unselfish after all to do what is the pleasantest to oneself."

"Ah! that is it--I am beginning to feel it. There is only one thing about which I am quite certain."

"And that is?"

"That to help others, that to love, is the only happy thing on earth. It is so nice to love. Sometimes when I am altogether miserable I can make myself happy by thinking of all the dear friends that I love, and planning little things I can do for them.--Ah, my dear friends! I would die to help them--Love! It is the only thing I do understand. I have grown so weak that I cannot realize now all I once thought and knew, and believe in it as I did--but I do love."

"And what more is wanted? I do not believe that any human being is altogether miserable as long as he can love. Love, dear, is the key of all happiness. Religion is love. Scientific people may talk of their discoveries--may talk about our having no wills, about our being machines--excuse me, dear, for I am not clever in these things--but can they explain this love? Not a bit of it. No machinery, no evolution, no fortuitous concourse of atoms--you see I know some of the learned terms--can make love, I know!"

The simple woman spoke with conviction. This was her favourite, indeed, her only argument against materialism. She would listen to no other arguments for or against. This one, in her opinion, entirely crushed vain philosophy, so there was no necessity to look further into the question.

She felt rather proud of her logic and eloquence, so looked through the corners of her eyes at Mary, to see what effect her speech had produced.

She was disappointed to discover that it had not impressed the girl much.

"But oh, what a puzzle this life is!" said Mary. "There can be no doubt that to love humanity, that to work for the happiness of the race, is far higher than merely to love and help our friends. But it is so difficult a problem; the interests of humanity and of the individual are so often entirely different."

Mrs. White looked thoughtful. The idea expressed by Mary was evidently rather novel to her, and she did not know whether it ought to be considered as an orthodox one or the reverse. Anyhow as being something new, it must be regarded, with suspicion--it might be some subtle fallacy of materialists and socialists--so she said,

"To work for humanity is far beyond most of us anyhow. We must be content to love and help each other, or do nothing. I don't think we poor simple women need trouble ourselves much about humanity. We must leave that to wiser heads, and even they seem to go wrong as often as not when they make the circle of their sympathy too wide.

"Besides how much nicer to love people you can be with and see, how pleasant to make them smile! To love humanity generally, and to think only about nations and races instead of individuals, must be rather a cold sort of a love. I am a weak woman and must love something I can touch. Now you see I am not so unselfish as you imagined," she laughed, "and I like to get an immediate reward for anything I do, and you will have to give me a reward at once dear for all this learned lecture, in the shape of a nice kiss."

At this juncture the maid announced that the tea was ready, so the debate on love was postponed till another day, the artless prattling of the little children, who then came indoors, turning the conversation into a very different groove.

Gradually by weakness and human love, Mary was brought over to doubt her old teachings. "Were they after all infallible? Was religion true?

Surrounded by all the mysteries of life, with all these loves, these emotions, these profound instincts, was it not presumptuous folly for man to despise their whisperings, and from the limited data of science to argue that there was no G.o.d, no religion, no free will, no _a priori_ ethics?"

Mary begun to yearn after that religion of love which she saw so beautifully exemplified in this woman.

At times, when she felt her head turn as if her senses were altogether going, when the shadow rushed on her mind as if to darken it suddenly and for ever; she would clasp her hands and shut her eyes, and repeat to herself the word, "Love! love! love!" in a monotonous pa.s.sionate way.

She felt as if doing this prevented the darkness from utterly closing on her. The uttering of this word seemed a charm to her in her half-witted state. It was her first attempt at prayer.

In this weak imbecile condition, love, as she said herself, became her master idea. She loved, loved that one man, and also in another way, her friends, especially her benefactress Catherine King, and this kind sister of Dr. Duncan.

Her mental disease seemed to have intensified this emotion; and well it was so, perhaps, for it relieved her overwrought brain from the presence of the shadow, which otherwise would have alone occupied her thoughts and oppressed her constantly.

Her love for the children was an intense one. She had never played with children for years, hardly ever when herself an infant, and she had actually come to consider them as a sort of half-conscious creatures, for Catherine generally talked about them as if they were so, when advocating her strange views as to their removal if they stood in the way of humanity's progress.

But now Mary, being in close companionship with babies, felt a true woman's sympathy for them, and fully realised the horrible nature of the work she was pledged to.

The natural result came at last. Her mind underwent a gradual change; but it was not till after a long time, not without much doubt and wavering, that she finally made a certain step of supreme importance.

This was no less than a determination that she at any rate would not be guilty of child-killing, however expedient it might be for humanity. She made up her mind to acquaint Catherine King with this resolve at the earliest opportunity.

But this left her still in a great perplexity. That intolerable secret would still be on her mind. She could not betray her benefactress.