“She’s married, and he isn’t dead, and they’re not divorced.  She’s married and he isn’t dead, and they’re not divorced.”  Rosemary kept saying it to herself mechanically, but no comfort came.  Through the long night, wakeful and wretched, she brooded over the painful difference between the woman to whom Alden had plighted his troth and the beautiful stranger whom he saw every day.

“She’s married,” Rosemary whispered, to the coarse unbleached muslin of her pillow.  “And when we’re married-” ah, it would all be different then.  But would it?  In a flash she perceived that marriage itself guarantees nothing in the way of love.

Hurt to her heart’s core, Rosemary sat up in bed and pondered, while the tears streamed over her cheeks.  She had not seen Alden since Mrs. Lee came, except the day she had gone there to tea, wearing her white muslin under her brown alpaca.  There was no way to see him, unless she went there again-the very thought of that made her shudder-or signalled from her hill-top with the scarlet ribbon.

And, to her, the Hill of the Muses was like some holy place that had been profaned.  The dainty feet of the stranger had set themselves upon her path in more ways than one.  What must life be out in the world, when the world was full of women like Mrs. Lee, perhaps even more beautiful?  Was everyone, married or not, continually stabbed by some heart-breaking difference between herself and another?

Having the gift of detachment immeasurably beyond woman, man may separate himself from his grief, contemplate it calmly in its various phases, and, with a mighty effort, throw it aside.  Woman, on the contrary, hugs hers close to her aching breast and remorselessly turns the knife in her wound.  It is she who keeps anniversaries, walks in cemeteries, wears mourning, and preserves trifles that sorrowfully have outlasted the love that gave them.

If she could only see him once!  And yet, what was there to say or what was there to do, beyond sobbing out her desolate heart in the shelter of his arms?  Could she tell him that she was miserable because she had come face to face with a woman more beautiful than she; that she doubted his loyalty, his devotion?  From some far off ancestor, her woman’s dower of pride and silence suddenly asserted itself in Rosemary.  When he wanted her, he would find her.  If he missed her signal, fluttering from the birch tree in the Spring wind, he could write and say so.  Meanwhile she would not seek him, though her heart should break from loneliness and despair.

Craving the dear touch of him, the sound of his voice, or even the sight of his tall well-knit figure moving along swiftly in the dusk, she compelled herself to accept the situation, bitterness and all.  Across her open window struck the single long deepening shadow that precedes daybreak, then grey lights dawned on the far horizon, paling the stars to points of pearl upon dim purple mists.  Worn and weary, Rosemary slept until she was called to begin the day’s dreary round of toil, as mechanical as the ticking of a clock.

Cold water removed the traces of tears from her cheeks, but her eyes were red and swollen.  The cheap mirror exaggerated her plainness, while memory pitilessly emphasised the beauty of the other woman.  As she dressed, the thought came to her that, no matter what happened, she could still go on loving him, that she might always give, whether or not she received anything at all in return.

“Service,” she said to herself, remembering her dream, “and sacrifice.  Giving, not receiving; asking, not answer.”  If this indeed was love, she had it in fullest measure, so why should she ask for more?

“Rosemary!”

“Yes,” she called back, trying hard to make her voice even, “I’m coming!”

“It beats all,” Grandmother said, fretfully, when she rushed breathlessly into the dining-room.  “For the life of me I can’t understand how you can sleep so much.”

Rosemary smiled grimly, but said nothing.

“Here I’ve been settin’, waitin’ for my breakfast, since before six, and it’s almost seven now.”

“Never mind,” the girl returned, kindly; “I’ll get it ready just as quickly as I can.”

“I was just sayin’,” Grandmother continued when Aunt Matilda came into the room, “that it beats all how Rosemary can sleep.  I’ve been up since half-past five and she’s just beginnin’ to get breakfast, and here you come, trailin’ along in with your hair not combed, at ten minutes to breakfast time.  I should think you’d be ashamed.”

“My hair is combed,” Matilda retorted, quickly on the defensive.

“I don’t know when it was,” Grandmother fretted.  “I ain’t seen it combed since I can remember.”

“Then it’s because you ain’t looked.  Any time you want to see me combin’ my hair you can come in.  I do it every morning.”

Grandmother laughed, sarcastically. “’Pears like you thought you was one of them mermaids I was readin’ about in the paper once.  They’re half fish and half woman and they set on rocks, combin’ their hair and singin’ and the ships go to pieces on the rocks ’cause the sailors are so anxious to see ’em they forget where they’re goin’.”

“There ain’t no rocks outside my door as I know of,” Matilda returned, “and only one rocker inside.”

“No, nor your hair ain’t like theirs neither.  The paper said their hair was golden.”

“Must be nice and stiff,” Matilda commented.  “I’d hate to have my hair all wire.”

Grandmother lifted her spectacles from the wart and peered through them critically.  “I dunno,” she said, “as it’d look any different, except for the colour.  The way you’re settin’ now, against the light, I can see bristles stickin’ out all over it, same as if ’twas wire.”

“Fluffy hair is all the style now,” said Matilda, complacently.

“Fluffy!” Grandmother grunted.  “If that’s what you call it, I reckon it’ll soon go out.  It might have been out for fifteen or twenty years and you not know it.  I don’t believe any self-respectin’ woman would let her hair go like that.  Why ’n the name of common sense can’t you take a hair brush and wet it in cold water and slick it up, so’s folks can see that it’s combed?  Mine’s always slick, and nobody can’t say that it isn’t.”

“Yes,” Matilda agreed with a scornful glance, “it is slick, what there is of it.”

Grandmother’s head burned pink through her scanty white locks and her eyes flashed dangerously.  Somewhat frightened, Matilda hastened to change the subject.

“She wears her hair like mine.”

“She?” repeated Grandmother, pricking up her ears, “Who’s she?”

“You know-the company up to Marshs’.”

“Who was tellin’ you?  The milkman, or his wife?”

“None of ’em,” answered Matilda, mysteriously.  Then, lowering her voice to a whisper, she added:  “I seen her myself!”

“When?” Grandmother demanded.  “You been up there, payin’ back your own call?”

“She went by here yesterday,” said Matilda, hurriedly.

“What was I doin’?” the old lady inquired, resentfully.

“One time you was asleep and one time you was readin’.”

“What?  Do you mean to tell me she went by here twice and you ain’t never told me till now?”

“When you’ve been readin’,” Matilda rejoined, with secret delight, “you’ve always told me and Rosemary too that you wan’t to be disturbed unless the house took afire.  Ain’t she, Rosemary?”

“What?” asked the girl, placing a saucer of stewed prunes at each place and drawing up the three chairs.

“Ain’t she always said she didn’t want to be disturbed when she was readin’?” She indicated Grandmother by an inclination of her frowsy head.

“I don’t believe any of us like to be interrupted when we’re reading,” Rosemary replied, tactfully.  She disliked to “take sides,” and always avoided it whenever possible.

“There,” exclaimed Matilda, triumphantly.

“And the other time?” pursued Grandmother.  Her eyes glittered and her cheeks burned with dull, smouldering fires.

“You was asleep.”

“I could have been woke up, couldn’t I?”

“You could have been,” Matilda replied, after a moment’s thought, “but when you’ve been woke up I ain’t never liked to be the one what did it.”

“If it’s anything important,” Grandmother observed, as she began to eat, “I’m willin’ to be interrupted when I’m readin’, or to be woke up when I’m asleep, and if that woman ever goes by the house again, I want to be told of it, and I want you both to understand it, right here and now.”

“What woman?” queried Rosemary.  She had been busy in the kitchen and had not grasped the subject of the conversation, though the rumbling of it had reached her from afar.

“Marshs’ company,” said both voices at once.

“Oh!” Rosemary steadied herself for a moment against the back of her chair and then sat down.

“Have you seen her?” asked Grandmother.

“Yes.”  Rosemary’s answer was scarcely more than a whisper.  In her wretchedness, she told the truth, being unable to think sufficiently to lie.

“When?” asked Aunt Matilda.

“Where?” demanded Grandmother.

“Yesterday, when I was out for a walk.”  It was not necessary to go back of yesterday.

“Where was she?” insisted Grandmother.

“Up on the hill.  I didn’t know she was there when I went up.  She was at the top, resting.”

“Did she speak to you?” asked Aunt Matilda.

“Yes.”  Rosemary’s voice was very low and had in it all the weariness of the world.

“What did she say?” inquired Grandmother, with the air of the attorney for the defence.  The spectacles were resting upon the wart now, and she peered over them disconcertingly.

“I asked you what she said,” Grandmother repeated distinctly, after a pause.

“She said:  ‘How do you do, Miss Starr?’”

“How’d she know who you were?”

“There, there, Mother,” put in Aunt Matilda.  “I reckon everybody in these parts knows the Starr family.”

“Of course,” returned the old lady, somewhat mollified.  “What else did she say?”

“Nothing much,” stammered Rosemary.  “That is, I can’t remember.  She said it was a nice day, or something of that sort, and then she went back home.  She didn’t stay but a minute.”  So much was true, even though that minute had agonised Rosemary beyond words.

“What does she look like?” Grandmother continued, with deep interest.

“Not-like anybody we know.  Aunt Matilda can tell you better than I can.  She saw her too.”

Accepting modestly this tribute to her powers of observation, Aunt Matilda took the conversation out of Rosemary’s hands, greatly to her relief.  The remainder of breakfast was a spirited dialogue.  Grandmother’s doubt on any one point was quickly silenced by the sarcastic comment from Matilda:  “Well, bein’ as you’ve seen her and I haven’t, of course you know.”

Meanwhile Rosemary ate, not knowing what she ate, choking down her food with glass after glass of water which by no means assuaged the inner fires.  While she was washing the breakfast dishes the other two were discussing Mrs. Lee’s hair.  Grandmother insisted that it was a wig, as play-actresses always wore them and Mrs. Lee was undoubtedly a play-actress.

“How do you know?” Matilda inquired, with sarcastic inflection.

“If she ain’t,” Grandmother parried, “what’s she gallivantin’ around the country for without her husband?”

“Maybe he’s dead.”

“If he’s dead, why ain’t she wearin’ mourning, as any decent woman would?  She’s either a play-actress, or else she’s a divorced woman, or maybe both.”  Either condition, in Grandmother’s mind, was the seal of social damnation.

“If we was on callin’ terms with the Marshs,” said Matilda, meditatively, “Mis’ Marsh might be bringin’ her here.”

“Not twice,” returned Grandmother, with determination.  “This is my house, and I’ve got something to say about who comes in it.  I wouldn’t even have Mis’ Marsh now, after she’s been hobnobbin’ with the likes of her.”

After reverting for a moment to the copper-coloured hair, which might or might not be a wig, the conversation drifted back to mermaids and the seafaring folk who went astray on the rocks.  Aunt Matilda insisted that there were no such things as mermaids, and Grandmother triumphantly dug up the article in question from a copy of The Household Guardian more than three months old.

“It’s a lie, just the same,” Matilda protested, though weakly, as one in the last ditch.

“Matilda Starr!” The clarion note of Grandmother’s voice would have made the dead stir.  “Ain’t I showed it to you, in the paper?” To question print was as impious as to doubt Holy Writ.

Rosemary was greatly relieved when Mrs. Lee gave way to mermaids in the eternal flow of talk.  She wondered, sometimes, that their voices did not fail them, though occasionally a sulky silence or a nap produced a brief interval of peace.  She worked faithfully until her household tasks were accomplished, discovering that, no matter how one’s heart aches, one can do the necessary things and do them well.

Early in the afternoon, she found herself free.  Instinct and remorseless pain led her unerringly to the one place, where the great joy had come to her.  She searched her suffering dumbly, and without mercy.  If she knew the reason why!

“She’s married, and her husband isn’t dead, and they’re not divorced.”  Parrot-like, Rosemary repeated the words to herself, emphasising each fact with a tap of her foot on the ground in front of her.  Then a new fear presented itself, clutching coldly at her heart.  Perhaps they were going to be divorced and then -

Something seemed to snap, like the breaking of a strained tension.  Rosemary had come to the point where she could endure no more, and mercifully the pain was eased.  Later on, no doubt, she could suffer again, but for the moment she felt only a dull weariness.  In the background the ache slumbered, like an ember that is covered with ashes, but now she was at rest.

She looked about her curiously, as though she were a stranger.  Yet, at the very spot where she stood, Mrs. Lee had stood yesterday, her brown eyes cold with controlled anger when she made her sarcastic farewell.  When she first saw her, she had been sitting on the log, where Alden usually sat.  Down in the hollow tree was the wooden box that held the red ribbon.  Shyly, the nine silver birches, with bowed heads, had turned down the hillside and stopped.  Across, on the other side of the hill, where God hung His flaming tapestries of sunset from the high walls of Heaven, Rosemary had stood that day, weeping, and Love had come to comfort her.

None of it mattered now-nothing mattered any more.  She had reached the end, whatever the end might be.  Seemingly it was a great pause of soul and body, the consciousness of arrival at the ultimate goal.

When she saw Alden, she would ask to be released.  She could tell him, with some semblance of truth, that she could not leave Grandmother and Aunt Matilda, because they needed her, and after they had done so much for her, she could not bring herself to seem ungrateful, even for him.  The books were full of such things-the eternal sacrifice of youth to age, which age unblushingly accepts, perhaps in remembrance of some sacrifice of its own.

He had told her, long ago, that she was the only woman he knew.  Now he had another standard to judge her by and, at the best, she must fall far short of it.  Some day Alden would marry-he must marry, and have a home of his own when his mother was no longer there to make it for him, and she-she was not good enough for him, any more than Cinderella was good enough for the Prince.

The fact that the Prince had considered Cinderella fully his equal happily escaped Rosemary now.  Clearly before her lay the one thing to be done:  to tell him it was all a mistake, and ask for freedom before he forced it upon her.  He had been very kind the other day, when she had gone there to tea but, naturally, he had seen the difference-must have seen it.

Of course it would not be Mrs. Lee-Rosemary could laugh at that now.  Her jealousy of an individual had been merely the recognition of a type, and her emotion the unfailing tribute inferiority accords superiority.  Married, and her husband not dead, nor divorced-manifestly it could not be Mrs. Lee.

She longed to set him free, to bid him mate with a woman worthy of him.  Some glorious woman, Rosemary thought, with abundant beauty and radiant hair, with a low, deep voice that vibrated through the room like some stringed instrument and lingered, in melodious echoes, like music that has ceased.  She saw her few days of joy as the one perfect thing she had ever had, the one gift she had prayed for and received.  This much could never be taken away from her.  She had had it and been blessed by it, and now the time had come to surrender it.  What was she, that she might hope to keep it?

    “Lo, what am I to Love, the Lord of all
      One little shell upon the murmuring sand,
      One little heart-flame sheltered in his hand-”

The moment of shelter became divinely dear.  Already, in her remembrance, she had placed a shrine to which she might go, in silence, when things became too hard.  She would have written to Alden, if she had had a sheet of paper, and an envelope, and a stamp, but she had not, and dared not face the torrent of questions she would arouse by asking for it.

Her face transfigured by a passion of renunciation, Rosemary reached into the hollow tree for the wooden box, and, for the last time unwound the scarlet ribbon.  She tied it to the lowest bough of the birch when the school bell rang, and went back to wait.  Without emotion, she framed the few words she would say.  “Just tell him it’s all a mistake, that they need me and I mustn’t leave them, and so good-bye.  And if he tries to kiss me for good-bye-oh, he mustn’t, for I couldn’t bear that!”

So Rosemary sat and waited-until almost dark, but no one came.  Alden had, indeed, hurried home to have afternoon tea with his mother and Edith.  He had almost forgotten the oriflamme that sometimes signalled to him from the top of the hill, and seldom even glanced that way.

In the gathering dusk, Rosemary took it down, unemotionally.  It seemed only part of the great denial.  She put it back into the box, and hid it in the tree.

“Service,” she said to herself, as she went home, “and sacrifice.  Giving, not receiving; asking, not answer.  And this is love!”