Standing on the spot where they had many times stood in moments of meeting a very real tenderness for that girl was in the heart of this woman who had paid so terribly for the girl's love. It brought a feeling that she had not paid too much, that no paying was ever too much for love. Love made life; and in turn love was what life was for. To live without it would be going through life without having been touched alive. In that moment it seemed no wrong love could bring about would be as deep as the wrong of denying love. There was again that old feeling of rising to something higher in her than she had known was there, that feeling of contact with all the beauty of the world, of being admitted to the inner sweetness and wonder of life. She had a new understanding of what she had felt; that was the thing added; that was the gift of the hard years.
And of a sudden she wanted terribly to see her mother. It seemed if she could see her mother now that she could make her understand. She saw it more simply than she had seen it before. She wanted to tell her mother that she loved because she could not help loving. She wanted to tell her that after all those years of paying for it she saw that love as the thing illumining her life; that if there was anything worthy in her, anything to love, it was in just this--that she had fought for love, that she would fight for it again. She wanted to see her mother! She believed she could help the hurt she had dealt.
She had walked slowly on, climbing a little hill. From there she looked back at the town. With fresh pain there came the consciousness that her mother was not there, that she could not tell her, that she had gone--gone without understanding, gone bewildered, broken. Her eyes dimmed until the town was a blur. She wanted to see her mother!
She was about to start back, but turned for a moment's look the other way, across that lovely country of little hills and valleys--brooks, and cattle in the brooks, and fields of many shades of green.
And then her eye fixed upon one thing and after that saw no other thing. Behind her was the place where the living were gathered together; but over there, right over there on the next hill, were the dead. She stood very still, looking over there passionately through dimmed eyes. And then swiftly, sobbing a little under her breath, she started that way. She wanted to see her mother!