She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. Her lips were white
and quivering, but there were no tears. At length she sat upright and
fixed her eyes upon Ruth.
"Don't be afraid of anything," she said in a strange tone, "poverty or
sickness or death, or any suffering God will let you bear together. That
isn't love--to be afraid. There's only one thing--the years! Oh, God,
the bitter, cruel, endless years!"
Miss Ainslie caught her breath and it sounded like a sob, but she
bravely kept it back. "I have been happy," she said, in pitiful triumph;
"I promised him that I would be, and I have kept my word. Sometimes it
was hard, but I had my dream. Lately, this last year, I have often been
afraid that--that something had happened. Thirty-three years, and you
know, dear," she added, with a quaint primness, "that I am a woman of
the world."
"In the world, but not of it," was on Ruth's lips, but she did not say
it.
"Still, I know it was wrong to doubt him--I couldn't, when I thought of
our last hour together, out on the hill in the moonlight. He said it was
conceivable that life might keep him from me, but death never could. He
told me that if he died, I would know, that he would come and tell me,
and that in a little while afterward, we should be together."
The dying embers cast a glow upon her face. It was almost waxen in its
purity; she seemed transfigured with the light of another world. "Last
night, he came to me--in a dream. He is dead--he has been dead for a
long time. He was trying to explain something to me--I suppose he was
trying to tell me why he had not come before. He was old--an old man,
Ruth, and I have always thought of him as young. He could not say
anything but my name--'Mary--Abby--Mary--Abby--' over and over again;
and, once, 'mother.' I was christened 'Mary Abigail,' but I never liked
the middle name, so I dropped it; and he used to tease me sometimes by
calling me 'Abby.' And--from his saying 'mother,' I know that he, too,
wherever he may be, has had that dream of--of our child."
Ruth was cold from head to foot, and her senses reeled. Every word that
Winfield had said in the morning sounded again in her ears. What was it
that went on around her, of which she had no ken? It seemed as though
she stood absolutely alone, in endless space, while planets swept past,
out of their orbits, with all the laws of force set suddenly aside.
Miss Ainslie felt her shuddering fear. "Don't be afraid, dear," she said
again, "everything is right. I kept my promise, and he kept his. He is
suffering--he is very lonely without me; but in a little while we shall
be together."