Chapter VIII: Learning to Be Brave and Sweet

Godmother's charming drawing-room seemed intolerably empty when he had gone and they two stood by the fire and looked into it trying to see again the jungle scene he had pointed out to them in the bed of coals. But the jungle was gone; the vision had faded with the seer. And Godmother and Mary Alice began picking up the teacups and the toast plate, almost as if there had been a funeral.

Then Godmother laughed. "How solemn we are!" she said, pretending to think it all very funny.

But Mary Alice couldn't pretend. She set down his teacup which she had just lifted with gentle reverence off the mantel, where he left it, and went closer to Godmother. Her lips were trembling, but she did not have to speak.

"I know, Precious--I know," whispered Godmother. She sat down in a big chair close to the fire--the chair he had just left--and Mary Alice sat on the hearth-rug and nestled her head against Godmother's knees. Neither of them said anything for what seemed a long time. They just looked into the glowing bed of coals and saw--different things!

Then, "I think," Mary Alice began, in a voice that was full of tears, "I think I wish we hadn't played any game. I think I wish I hadn't seen him at all."

"Lovey _dear_!"

"Yes, I do!" wept Mary Alice, refusing to be comforted. "Everything was beautiful, before he came. And now he's gone, and I'm so--lonesome!"

Godmother was silent for a moment. "There's the Secret," she suggested, at last. "It was--it was when I felt just as you do now, that I began to learn the Secret."

Mary Alice made no reply; there seemed to be nothing that she could say But after they had sat silent for a long while, she got up and kissed her godmother with a new passion which had in it tenderness as well as adoration.

"I don't believe I can be brave and lovely about it, as you must have been to make people love you so. But I'm going to _try_," she said.

The success with which Mary Alice's trying met was really beautiful to see. At first, it was pretty hard for her to care much about the Secret, or about people. Every assemblage just seemed to her an empty crowd where he was not. But when she began to wonder to how many of those selfsame people the others seemed the same as to her, she was interested once more; the Secret began to work.

It worked so well, in fact, that Mary Alice came to be quite famous in a small way. People in Godmother's distinguished and delightful "set" talked enthusiastically of Mary Alice's quiet charm, and she was asked here and asked there, and had a quite wonderful time.

Her "poor" friend came in, whenever he could, for tea and toast; and sometimes he made what he called "a miserable return" for this hospitality, by asking Godmother and Mary Alice to dine with him at his palace on upper Fifth Avenue and afterwards to sit in his box at the opera. He was a widower, and his two sons were married and lived in palaces of their own. His only daughter was abroad finishing her education; and his great, lonely house was to serve a brief purpose for her when she "came out" and until she married. Then, he thought, he would either give it up or turn it over to her; certainly he would not keep it for himself.

At first, Mary Alice found it hard to remember the Secret "with so many footmen around." But by and by she got used to them and, other things being equal, could have nearly as good a time in a palace as in a flat. For this, she had a wonderful example in Godmother of whom some one had once said, admiringly, that she was "never mean to anybody just because he's rich." It was true. Godmother was just as "nice" to the rich as to the poor, to the "cowering celebrity" (as she was wont to say) as to the most important nobody. It was the Secret that helped her to do it. It was the Secret that helped Mary Alice.

And so the winter went flying by. Twice, letters came--from him; and Mary Alice answered them, giving the answers to Godmother to send. Once he wrote from London, and once from somewhere on the Bosphorus. They were lonesome letters, both; but he didn't ask for the Secret, though he mentioned it each time.