"But that might come, dear; I think it would come."
"I know it would not," replied Dora quietly. There was a dreaminess in her voice, as if she were repeating something she had heard or said before.
Suddenly Mrs. Glynde rose from her chair, and going towards her daughter, she knelt on the soft carpet, still afraid to look at her face. There was something suggestive and strange in the attitude, for the elder woman was crouching at the feet of the younger.
"My darling," she whispered, "I know, I _know!_ I have known all along. But mind, no one else knows, no one suspects! _It_ can never come to you again in this life. Women are like that, it never comes to them twice. To some it never comes at all; think of that, dear, it never comes to them at all! Surely that is worse?"
Dora took the nervous, eager hands in her own quiet grasp and held them still. But she said nothing.
"I have prayed night and morning," the elder woman went on in the same pleading whisper, "that strength might be given you, and I think my prayers were heard. For you have been strong, and no one has known except me, and I do not matter. The strength must have come from somewhere. I like to think that I had something to do with it, however little."
Again there was a silence. Across the quiet garden, from the church that was hidden among the trees, the sound of the evening hymn came rising and falling, the harshness of the rustic voices toned down by the whispering of the leaves.
"I know," Mrs. Glynde went on, speaking perhaps out of her own experience, "that now it must seem that there is nothing left. I know that It can never come to you, but something else may--a sort of alleviation; something that is a little stronger than resignation, and many people think that it is love. It is not love; never believe that! But it is surely sent because so many women have--to go through life--without that--which makes life worth living."
"Hush, dear!" said Dora; and Mrs. Glynde paused as if to collect herself. Perhaps her daughter stopped her just in time.
"There is," she went on in a calmer voice, "a sort of satisfaction in the duties that come and have to be performed. The duties towards one's husband and the others--the others, darling--are the best. They are not the same, not the same as if--as they might have been, but sometimes it is a great alleviation. And the time passes somehow."