“Some day you’ll own he’s been as good a husband as he’s been a brother.  Better; for it’s a more difficult post, my dear.  I don’t really think my body, spine and all, can have tried him more than your spirit.”

“What have I done?  Tell me—­tell me.”

“Done?  Oh, Nancy, I hate to have to say it to you.  What haven’t you done?  There’s no way in which you haven’t hurt and humiliated him.  I’m not thinking of your separation—­I’m thinking of the way you’ve treated him, and his affection for you and Peggy.  You won’t let him love you.  You won’t even let him love his little girl.”

“Does he say that?”

“Would he say it?  People in my peculiar position don’t require to have things said to them; they say them.  You see, if I didn’t say them now I should have to get up out of my grave and do it, and that would be ten times more disagreeable for you.  It might even be very uncomfortable for me.”

“Edie, I wish I knew when you were serious.”

“Well, if I’m not serious now, when shall I be?”

Anne smiled.  “You’re very like Walter.”

“Yes.  He’s every bit as serious as I am.  And he’s getting more and more serious every day.”

“Oh, Edie, you don’t understand.  I—­I’ve suffered so terribly.”

“I do understand.  I’ve gone through it—­every pang of it—­and it’s all come back to me again through your suffering—­and I know it’s been worse for you.  I’ve told him so.  It’s because I don’t want you to suffer more that I’m saying these awful things to you.”

“Oh! Am I to suffer more?”

“I believe that’s the only way your happiness can come to you—­through great suffering.  I’m only afraid that the suffering may come through Peggy, if you don’t take care.”

“Peggy—­”

It was her own terror put into words.

“Yes.  That child has a terrible capacity for loving.  And for her that means suffering.  She loves you.  She loves her father.  Do you suppose she won’t suffer when she sees?  Her little heart will be torn in two between you.”

“Oh, Edith—­I cannot bear it.”

She hid her face from the anguish.

“You needn’t.  That’s it.  It rests with you.”

“With me?  If you would only tell me how.”

“I can’t tell you anything.  It’ll come.  Probably in the way you least expect it.  But—­it’ll come.”

“Edie, I feel as if you held us all together.  And when you’ve gone—­”

“You mean when it’s gone.  When it’s ‘gone,’” said Edie, smiling.  “I shall hold you together all the more.  You needn’t sigh like that.”

“Did I sigh?”

As Anne stooped over the bed she sighed again, thinking how Edith’s loving arms used to leap up and hold her, and how they could never hold anything any more.

Of all the things that Edith said to her that afternoon, two remained fixed in Anne’s memory:  how Peggy would suffer through overmuch loving—­she remembered that saying, because it had confirmed her terror; and how love was a provision for the soul’s redemption of the body, or for the body’s redemption of the soul.  This she remembered, because she did not understand it.