Her Estimate of Women
And, most pitiful of all, when blinded by her own senses, she will surrender the last citadel of her womanhood to him who comes a-wooing, undismayed by the weeping women around her whose sacred altars have been profaned and left bare. They may have told her that if it is love, the man will protect her even against himself, but why should she take account of the experience of others? Has not he himself just told her that she is different from all other women? Hugging this sophistry to her breast, and still searching for love, she believes him until the day of realisation dawns upon her--old and broken and bitter-hearted, with scarcely a friend left in the world, and not even the compensating coin thriftily demanded by her sister of the streets.
Under her countless masques and behind her multitudinous phases, lurks the old hunger, the old appeal. Man, too, though more rarely, guessing that the imperishable beauty of the soul is above the fog of sense and not in it, searches hopefully at first, then despairingly, and finally offers the counterfeit to the living Lie who is waiting for it with eager, outstretched hands.
* * * * *
The Clouds Break
Stirred to the depths by the pity of it, Edith brushed away a tear or two. She was not at all sleepy, but drew the blanket closer around her, for the night grew chill as the earth swept farther and farther away from the sun. The clouds had begun to drift away, and faintly, through the shadow, glimmered one pale star. Gradually, others came out, then a white and ghostly moon, with a veil of cloud about it, grey, yet iridescent, like mother-of-pearl.
Blown far across the seas of space by a swiftly rising wind, the clouds vanished, and all the starry hosts of heaven marched forth, challenging the earth with javelins of light.
"Starbreak," murmured Edith, "up there and in my soul."
The blue rays of the love-star burned low upon the grey horizon, that star towards which the eyes of women yearn and which women's feet are fain to follow, though, like a will-o'-the-wisp, it leads them through strange and difficult places, and into the quicksands.
Fellowship with the World
The body grows slowly, but the soul progresses by leaps and bounds. Through a single hurt or a single joy, the soul of a child may reach man's estate, never to go backward, but always on. And so, through a great love and her own complete comprehension of its meaning, Edith had grown in a night out of herself, into a beautiful fellowship with the whole world.