You
must not think that I am acting now from a sense of duty to him or
to myself. Duty does not enter into my feeling: it is love; all
that I am forbids me to do anything else."
But after a while she went back and bared before him in a way the
history of her heart. "The morning after he told me, I went to
church. I remember the lessons of the day and the hymns, and how I
left the church before the sermon, because everything seemed to be
on his side, and no one was on mine. He had done wrong and was
guilty; and I had been wrong and was innocent; and the church
comforted him and overlooked me; and I was angry and walked out of
it.
"And do you remember the day I came to see you and you proposed
everything to me, and I rejected everything? You told me to go
away for a while, to throw myself into the pleasures of other
people; you reminded me of prayer and of the duty of forgiveness;
you told me to try to put myself in his place, and reminded me of
self-sacrifice, and then said at last that I must leave it to time,
which sooner or later settles everything. I rejected everything
that you suggested. But I have accepted everything since, and have
learned a lesson and a service from each: the meaning of prayer and
of forgiveness and of self-sacrifice; and what the lapse of time
can do to bring us to ourselves and show us what we wish. I say, I
have lived through all these, and I have gotten something out of
them all; but however much they may mean, they never constitute
love; and it is my love that brings me back to him now.
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