Rachel laughed, but not light-heartedly.  Hester had only put into words a latent conviction of her own which troubled her.

“Dick is the right kind of man to marry,” continued Hester, dispassionately.  “What lights he has he lives up to.  If that is not high praise, I don’t know what is.  He is good, but somehow his goodness does not offend one.  One can condone it.  And, if you care for such things, he has a thorough-going respect for women, which he carries about with him in a little patent safe of his own.”

“I don’t want to marry a man for his qualities and mental furniture,” said Rachel, wearily.  “If I did I would take Mr. Dick.”

There was a short silence.

“I am sure,” said Rachel at last, “that you do not realize how commonplace I am.  You know those conventional heroines of second-rate novels, who love tremendously once, and then, when things go wrong, promptly turn into marble statues, and go through life with hearts of stone?  Well, my dear, I am just like that.  I know it’s despicable.  I have straggled against it.  It is idiotic to generalize from one personal experience.  I keep before my mind that other men are not like him.  I know they aren’t, but yet—­somehow I think they are.  I am frightened.”

Hester turned her wide eyes towards her friend.

“Do you still consider, after these four years, that he did you an injury?”

Rachel looked out upon the mournful landscape.  The weariness of midsummer was upon it.  A heavy hand seemed laid upon the brow of the distant hills.

“I gave him everything I had,” she said, slowly, “and he threw it away.  I have nothing left for any one else.  Perhaps it is because I am naturally economical,” she added, smiling faintly, “that it seems now, looking back, such a dreadful waste.”

“Only in appearance, not in reality,” said Hester.  “It looks like a waste of life, that mowing down of our best years by a relentless passion which itself falls dead on the top of them.  But it is not so.  Every year I live I am more convinced that the waste of life lies in the love we have not given, the powers we have not used, the selfish prudence which will risk nothing, and which, shirking pain, misses happiness as well.  No one ever yet was the poorer in the long-run for having once in a lifetime ‘let out all the length of all the reins.’”

“You mean it did me good,” said Rachel, “and that he was a kind of benefactor in disguise.  I dare say you are right, but you see I don’t take a burning interest in my own character.  I don’t find my mental stand-point—­isn’t that what Mrs. Loftus calls it?—­very engrossing.”

“He was a benefactor, all the same,” said Hester, with decision.  “I did not think so at the time, and if I could have driven over him in an omnibus I would have done so with pleasure.  But I believe that the day will come when you will cover that grave with a handsome monument, erected out of gratitude to him for not marrying you.  And now, Rachel, will you forgive me beforehand for what I am going to say?”