When she saw Alden, she would ask to be released. She could tell him, with some semblance of truth, that she could not leave Grandmother and Aunt Matilda, because they needed her, and after they had done so much for her, she could not bring herself to seem ungrateful, even for him. The books were full of such things--the eternal sacrifice of youth to age, which age unblushingly accepts, perhaps in remembrance of some sacrifice of its own.
He had told her, long ago, that she was the only woman he knew. Now he had another standard to judge her by and, at the best, she must fall far short of it. Some day Alden would marry--he must marry, and have a home of his own when his mother was no longer there to make it for him, and she--she was not good enough for him, any more than Cinderella was good enough for the Prince.
The fact that the Prince had considered Cinderella fully his equal happily escaped Rosemary now. Clearly before her lay the one thing to be done: to tell him it was all a mistake, and ask for freedom before he forced it upon her. He had been very kind the other day, when she had gone there to tea but, naturally, he had seen the difference--must have seen it.
Rosemary's Few Days of Joy
Of course it would not be Mrs. Lee--Rosemary could laugh at that now. Her jealousy of an individual had been merely the recognition of a type, and her emotion the unfailing tribute inferiority accords superiority. Married, and her husband not dead, nor divorced--manifestly it could not be Mrs. Lee.
She longed to set him free, to bid him mate with a woman worthy of him. Some glorious woman, Rosemary thought, with abundant beauty and radiant hair, with a low, deep voice that vibrated through the room like some stringed instrument and lingered, in melodious echoes, like music that has ceased. She saw her few days of joy as the one perfect thing she had ever had, the one gift she had prayed for and received. This much could never be taken away from her. She had had it and been blessed by it, and now the time had come to surrender it. What was she, that she might hope to keep it?
"Lo, what am I to Love, the Lord of all One little shell upon the murmuring sand, One little heart-flame sheltered in his hand--"
The moment of shelter became divinely dear. Already, in her remembrance, she had placed a shrine to which she might go, in silence, when things became too hard. She would have written to Alden, if she had had a sheet of paper, and an envelope, and a stamp, but she had not, and dared not face the torrent of questions she would arouse by asking for it.