Marna burst into rippling laughter.

“I’ll give her something better than art, Kate Crosspatch.  I’ll give her a home—­and I’ll name my first girl after her.”

“Marna!” gasped Kate.  “You do go pretty fast for a little thing.”

“Oh, I’m Irish,” laughed Marna.  “We Irish are a very old people.  We always knew that if you loved a man, you had to have him or die, and that if you had him, you’d love to see the look of him coming out in your sons and daughters.”

Suddenly the look of almost infantile blitheness left her face.  The sadness which is inherent in the Irish countenance spread over it, like sudden mist over a landscape.  The ancient brooding aspect of the Celts was upon her.

“Yes,” she repeated, “we Irish are very old, and there is nothing about life—­or death—­that we do not know.”

Kate was not quite sure what she meant, but with a sudden impulse she held out her arms to the girl, who, with a low cry, fled to them.  Then her bright bravery melted in a torrent of tears.

XI

They had met like flame and wind.  It was irrational and wonderful and conclusive.  But after all, it might not have come to quite so swift a climax if Marna, following Kate’s advice, had not confided the whole thing to Mrs. Barsaloux.

Now, Mrs. Barsaloux was a kind woman, and one with plenty of sentiment in her composition.  But she believed that there were times when Love should not be given the lead.  Naturally, it seemed to her that this was one of them.  She had spent much money upon the education of this girl whom she had “assumed,” as Marna sometimes playfully put it.  Nothing but her large, active, and perhaps interfering benevolence and Mama’s winning and inexplicable charm held the two together, and the very slightness of their relationship placed them under peculiar obligations to each other.

“It’s ungrateful of you,” Mrs. Barsaloux explained, “manifestly ungrateful!  It’s your role to love nothing but your career.”  She was not stern, merely argumentative.

“But didn’t you expect me ever to love any one?” queried Marna.

Mrs. Barsaloux contemplated a face and figure made for love from the beginning, and delicately ripened for it, like a peach in the sun.

“But you could have waited, my dear girl.  There’s time for both the love and the career.”

Marna shook her head slowly.

“George says there isn’t,” she answered with an irritating sweetness.  “He says I’m not to go on the stage at all.  He says—­”

“Don’t ‘he says’ me like that, Marna,” cried her friend.  “It sounds too unutterably silly.  Here you are with a beautiful talent—­every one agrees about that—­and a chance to develop it.  I’ve made many sacrifices to give you that chance.  Very well; you’ve had your trial before the public.  You’ve made good.  You could repay yourself and me for all that has been involved in your development, and you meet a man and come smiling to me and say that we’re to throw the whole thing over because ‘he says’ to.”