"Do you expect my face to fall at that?"

"No, but I thought so much of myself once, and now I am nobody at all.
At first it distressed me, and then I was glad, for it makes you
everything and me nothing. Yes, I am glad, but I am just a little bit
sorry that I should be so glad!" "Poor Grizel!" said he.

"Poor Grizel!" she echoed. "You are not angry with me, are you, for
being almost sorry for her? She used to be so different. 'Where is
your independence, Grizel?' I say to her, and she shakes her sorrowful
head. The little girl I used to be need not look for me any more; if
we were to meet in the Den she would not know me now."

Ah, if only Tommy could have loved in this way! He would have done it
if he could. If we could love by trying, no one would ever have been
more loved than Grizel. "Am I to be condemned because I cannot?" he
sometimes said to himself in terrible anguish; for though pretty
thoughts came to him to say to her when she was with him, he suffered
anguish for her when he was alone. He knew it was tragic that such
love as hers should be given to him, but what more could he do than he
was doing?




CHAPTER XIV

ELSPETH