It was altogether a terrible crisis. How she should struggle through all the parts of it, or what she should be when it was over, she could not trust herself to say. The world seemed too heavy a burden to be fought against. Yet with what thoughts and aspirations and earnest prayers she had stood by Brigit's side at the altar rails. She had been given a supernatural strength for the marriage ceremony. She was by nature and before all things, from first to last, unalterably a good friend, and at that moment of intensest difficulty the sight of Robert's happiness had made her oblivious to every other consideration. Glad tears had risen to her eyes. She had been swayed by one feeling--a deep, sincere thankfulness that his love-story, which had promised sorrow only from the very beginning, was ending, unexpectedly, so well. She might have feared that he was changing one form of unhappiness for another, but she knew his impatient spirit, and, knowing it, she could not imagine that any earthly pain could try him so sorely as a lifelong separation from the one woman he loved--loved to the pitch of madness.
And then--in one moment--the strange tidings came which drove her from the stupor of resignation to fevers of anxiety more consuming than any she had ever felt before. A great flame, successive flames, of terror swept over her, as she feigned placid sleep in the little cabin, at the thought of the news poor Reckage would have to break on the morrow. How would Robert bear it? That he would act a noble and true part she could not doubt. But at a certain degree of suffering, the strongest man can think of nothing except himself, and she felt already, in anticipation, the dumb torture she would have to endure in looking on, helpless and unnoticed, at an agony which she could neither share nor relieve. The fear of losing him had been dreadful, but it was even more dreadful to know that although she might have, after all, a certain right now to offer him sympathy, she could never make him happy, that she could never hope to learn the secret regrets, griefs, and torments, the unspoken broodings which would surely enough prey upon his spirit. She pictured herself sitting at his side, or walking with him, for hours--he absorbed in his own sorrowful thoughts, she striving vainly to distract him by a tinkling prattle on every topic except the one nearest his heart. Oh, how fearfully wide asunder they were! A sensation of the enormous distance which can exist between two souls in daily companionship filled her with a sickening, shivering heaviness. She thought she would have to cry out because of the slow fire which seemed to scorch her dry and aching eyes. Robert would never really need her, never really care about her. This new trouble would take him farther away than ever. He would burn all his ships, and any poor little tenderness he might have had in the past for her, with them. Some great revulsion would take place in his character; he would perhaps grow silent, reserved, enigmatic, his face would show to the world the terrible, false, unknowable peace which is the veil of the dead. It was useless to smooth her difficulties which existed. It was foolish and wrong to encourage herself in unreal ideas about him. It was best always to be straightforward and admit the truth--no matter how bitter. And yet he had been kind and helpful to her in a way in which scarce any one else could have been. She clung to the belief that she would be able to do something to make his hour of trial less severe. The hope which insinuates itself into every unrequited love still lingered. He could at least always talk to her about Brigit: that common memory would be a constant link between them. She had earned his esteem, and perhaps with his esteem an affection deeper than he himself realised. Under the pressure of a sudden and tragical necessity, he would turn to her with the certainty that she would not fail him. She was modest enough about her own powers. A remark she had once heard Reckage pass, to the effect that religious women of devoted lives were unhappily conspicuous, as a rule, for feebleness of mind and strength of prejudice, haunted her as a kind of doom from which there was no appeal. She knew, too, the verdict usually passed on those of either sex who have the courage to maintain an unselfish attitude whether toward God or some fellow-creature. But here she comforted herself by deciding that her utter isolation in this universe rested on the fact that she did not much deserve to be loved by anybody. This granted--not without a pang--she felt the signs of weariness in her heart, but none of wavering. She resolved to be foolish in the eyes of the self-satisfied.