As I passed the Park, I saw that spring had leaped to summer and the trees waved fresh, green branches in the air--just such trees as John and I walked under, less than a year ago, making great plans for a golden future; and a golden future there must be, but I had then no hope of it, no joy in life, no happiness even in my beauty. One only thought spurred me on, to forget past, present and future; to buy forgetfulness by any caprice; to win diversion by any adventure.
After some time I saw that I was in a side street whose number seemed familiar; self-searching at last recalled to me that on this street lived two rival faith healers, about whose lively competition for clients Cadge had once told us girls a funny story.
Could there have come to my thought some hope of finding rest from sorrow in the leading of another mind? Impossible to say. I was near insanity, I think. I chose the nearer practitioner and rang the bell.
I can smile now at memory of the stuffy little parlour into which I was ushered, but I did not smile then at it, nor at the middle-aged woman who received me with a set smile of stereotyped placidity. Her name, I think, was Mallard.
"Have you a conviction of disease, my daughter?" she asked, in a low voice with a caressing overtone gurgling in its cadences. "You look as radiant as the morn. You should not think ill."
"I am not ill," I replied; "but the world is harsh."
"The world is the expression of our sense life to the spirit," she cooed. "We do not live or die, but we pass through the phenomena. Through the purifying of our thoughts we will gradually become more and more ethereal until we are translated."
I felt that momentary shiver that folk tales tells us is caused by some one walking over our graves.
"I'm in no haste to be translated," I said.
"No one need be translated until she is ready--unless she has enemies. Are you suffering from the errors of others? Has any one felt fear for you? That would account for what the world calls unhappiness. Is some one trying to influence your subjective state?"
"I am convinced of it," I said with wasted sarcasm. "But you can do nothing for me; you can't--can you work on unbelievers?"
"Most assuredly. We are channels through which truth must flow to our patients. I need not tell you what I myself have done."--Mrs. Mallard modestly cast down her eyes.--"Mrs. Eddy has healed carous bones and cancers. I--some of our healers can dissuade the conviction of decayed teeth. The 'filling,' as the world calls it, is, in such cases, pink and very durable. If these marvels can be wrought upon the body, why may not the mind be led toward healing? Confide; confide."