Page:Tales of the long bow.pdf/83

 blind and bright with tears: she mastered her voice and it was steady.

"You talk about failures," she said. "I suppose most people would call me a failure and all my people failures now; except those who would say we never failed, because we never had to try. Anyhow, we're all poor enough now; I don't know whether you know that I'm teaching music. I dare say we deserved to go. I dare say we were useless. Some of us tried to be harmless. But—but now I must say something, about some of us who tried rather hard to be harmless—in that way. The new people will tell you those ideals were Victorian and Tennysonian, and all the rest of it—well, it doesn't matter what they say. They know quite as little about us as we about them. But to you, when you talk like that what can I do, but tell you that if we were stiff, if we were cold, if we were careful and conservative, it was because deep down in our souls some of us did believe that there might be loyalty and love like that, for which a woman might well wait even to the end of the world. What is it to these people if we chose not to be drugged or distracted with anything less worthy? But it would be hard indeed if when I find it does exist after all hard on you, harder on me,