MELTED

Some days are like the miracle flowers that open in the garden from plants you didn’t expect to bloom at all.  I might have been born, lived and died without having this one come into my life, and now that I have had it I don’t know how to write it, except in the crimson of blood, the blue of flame, the gold of glory—­and a tinge of light green would well express the part I have played.  But it is all over at last and—­

Ruth Chester was the unfolding of the first hour-petal and I got a glimpse of a heart of gold that I feel dumb with worship to think of.  She’s God’s own good woman and He made her in one of His holy hours.  I wish I could have borne her, or she me, and the tenderness of her arms was a sacrament.  We two women just stood aside with life’s artifices and concealments and let our own hearts do the talking.

She said she had come because she felt that if she talked with me I might be better able to understand Alfred when he came and that she had seen that the judge was very determined, and she thoroughly recognized his force of character.  We stopped there while I gave her the document to read.  I suppose it was dishonorable, but I needed her protection from it.  I’m glad she had the strength of mind to walk with a head high in the air to Judy’s range and burn it up.  Anything might have happened if she hadn’t.  And even now I feel that only my marriage vows will close up the case for the judge—­even yet he may—­But when Ruth had got done with Alfred, she had wiped Judge Wade’s appreciation of him completely off my mind and destroyed it in tender words that burned us both worse than Judy’s fire burned the letter.  She did me an awfully good service.

“And so you see, you lovely woman you, do you not, that God has made you for him as a tribute to his greatness and it is given to you to fulfil a destiny?” She was so beautiful as she said it that I had to turn my eyes away, but I felt as I did when those awful ’let-not-man-put-asunder’—­from Mr. Carter—­words were spoken over me by Mr. Raines, the Methodist minister.  It made me wild, and before I knew it I had poured out the whole truth to her in a perfect cataract of words.  The truth always acts on women as some hitherto untried drug, and you can never tell what the reaction is going to be.  In this case I was stricken dumb and found it hard to see.

“Oh, dear heart,” she exclaimed as she reached out and drew me into her lovely gracious arms, “then the privilege is all the more wonderful for you, as you make some sacrifice to complete his life.  Having suffered this, you will be all the greater woman to understand him.  I accept my own sorrow at his hands willingly, as it gives me the larger sympathy for his work, though he will no longer need my personal encouragement as he has for years.  In the light of his love this lesser feeling for Doctor Moore will soon pass away and the accord between you will be complete.”  This was more than I could stand and feeling less than a worm, I turned my face into her breast and wailed.  Now who would have thought that girl could dance as she did?