From that
moment until she heard the pioneer's wagon, escorted by her husband,
bringing the unconscious Orlando Guise to her door, she had lived in a
dream which seemed like a year of time to her.
Since the early morning of that very day, when Joel had leaned over her
bed and asked her in his slow, grinding voice how she was, she had lived
more than in all the past nineteen years of her life. The Young Doctor
had come and gone, amazed at first, but presently with a look of
apprehension in his eyes. There was not much trace of yesterday's illness
in the alert, eager girl-wife, who twenty-four hours before had been
really nearer to the end of all things than her aged husband. The Young
Doctor knew all too well what the curious, throbbing light in her eyes
meant. He knew that the gay and splendid Orlando Guise had made the sun
for this prismatic radiance, and that the story of her life, which Louise
had wished to tell him yesterday, would never now be told--for she would
have no desire to tell it. The old vague misery, the ancient veiled
torture, was behind her, and she was presently to suffer a new
torture--but also a joy for which men and women have borne unspeakable
things. No, Louise would never tell him the story of her life, because
now she knew it was a thing which must not be told. Her mind understood
things it had never known before. To be wise is to be secret, and she had
learned some wisdom; and the Young Doctor wondered if the greater wisdom
she must learn would be drunk from the cup of folly.
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