Page:Margaret Sherwood--A Puritan in Bohemia.djvu/128

120 some ways you aren't seventeen. You must not carry a child's notion of absolute surety into the life of a grown-up woman."

"But I chose my work," persisted Anne. "I haven't time for luxuries."

"Love is not an indulgence," said Mrs. Kent severely. "It is a life-long battle. It is an agony, a doubt, a temptation, perhaps a triumph. It is no easy way of escape, but the hardest road, and the sweetest, that human feet can tread."

Anne's fingers reached out and touched the soft black veil.

"It is too hard," she whispered.

"No," said Mrs. Kent slowly, "it is not too hard. It is good to know the larger meanings of life, even if they must be learned with many tears. One learns all through love, except what has to be learned through death. It gives one the keys to everything, the lives of saints, the lives of sinful men and women too.

"Listen. When I was a girl I, too, was puzzled vaguely about everything. Then suddenly love came. But the old doubts