No," he added, smiling, "not to drown, I
hope, but to find a new life in the ruins of the old. I have been
on the wrong tack; I have always had what I liked, and done what I
liked; and now when I am confronted with things which I do not like
at all, I have just got to endure them, and be glad that I have
still got the power of suffering left."
Mrs. Graves looked at him very tenderly. "Yes," she said,
"suffering has a great power, and one doesn't want those whom one
loves not to suffer. It is the condition of loving; but it must be
real suffering, not morbid, self-invented torture. It's a great
mistake to suffer more than one need; one wastes life fast so. I
would not intervene to save you from real suffering, even if I
could; but I don't want you to suffer in an unreal way. I think you
are diffident, too easily discouraged, too courteous, if that is
possible--because diffidence, and discouragement, and even
courtesy, are not always unselfish things. If one renounces
anything one has set one's heart upon one must do so for its own
sake, and not only because the disapproval and disappointment of
others makes life uncomfortable. I think that your life has tended
to make you value an atmosphere of diffused tranquillity too much.
If one is sensitive to the censure or the displeasure of others, it
may not be unselfish to give up things rather than provoke it--it
may only be another form of selfishness. Some of the most unworldly
people I know have not overcome the world at all; they have merely
made terms with it, and have found that abnegation is only more
comfortable than conquest.
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