Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/224

 was in part my fault. I was very harsh and short with her to-day.'

'She deserved harshness and shortness;—I'll answer for it!'

'Perhaps she did. One need not apportion blame. We will not pick my old friend to pieces, Jill. Do you know'—she looked round into Jill's face—'I often feel that to speak ill of people is to take some of their life from them. You know what I mean?—To recognize, with another, a person's faults, is as if one took some of his life away.'

'Yes.' Jill was doubtful. 'But there are faults.'

'What is a fault? What are her faults? Are we not all the same? Do we not all crave love?—To be loved most? It seems to me that we are all one in that;—all life one torrent of longing, rushing in the same bed; and what we call faults in one another are the rocks and impediments against which we dash ourselves. Do you not think of it like that? I think so much alone that I do not know whether I seem eccentric in what I say.'

Marthe's face, turned so gently, so ardently upon her, against the pearly sky, was as lovely as the pear-blossoms.

'I've never thought about anything of that sort at all,' Jill said, meditating. 'A torrent? That makes us quite helpless, doesn't it? Isn't there another side to us? The side that chooses which way it will go?'

'Yes; yes'—with her ardour, her gentleness, Marthe Ludérac nodded—'but that other side we can