The steady radiance seemed
for a second to have its counterpart within her; she shut her eyes;
she opened them and looked at the lamp again; another love burnt in
the place of the old one, or so, in a momentary glance of amazement,
she guessed before the revelation was over and the old surroundings
asserted themselves. She leant in silence against the mantelpiece.
"There are different ways of loving," she murmured, half to herself,
at length.
Katharine made no reply and seemed unaware of her words. She seemed
absorbed in her own thoughts.
"Perhaps he's waiting in the street again to-night," she exclaimed.
"I'll go now. I might find him."
"It's far more likely that he'll come here," said Mary, and Katharine,
after considering for a moment, said:
"I'll wait another half-hour."
She sank down into her chair again, and took up the same position
which Mary had compared to the position of one watching an unseeing
face. She watched, indeed, not a face, but a procession, not of
people, but of life itself: the good and bad; the meaning; the past,
the present, and the future. All this seemed apparent to her, and she
was not ashamed of her extravagance so much as exalted to one of the
pinnacles of existence, where it behoved the world to do her homage.
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