You must advise and help me. You know, I am sure, that my love for
Maud is the strongest, largest, purest thing, beyond all comparison
and belief, that has ever happened to me. I am never for a single
instant unaware of it. I sometimes think there is nothing else left
of me; and then this happens, and I see that I have not gone deep
enough yet."
"Yes," said Mrs. Graves, smiling, "life is like the sea, I think.
When one is a child, it is just a great plain of waters, with
little ships sailing on it: it is pleasant to play by, with
breaking waves to wade in, and little treasures thrown up on its
rim; then, as one knows more, one realises that it is another
world, full of its own urgent life, quite regardless of man, and
over which man has no power, except by a little trickery in places.
Man is just a tiresome, far-off incident, his ships like little
moving shadows, his nets and lines like small fretful devices. But
the old wise monsters of the depths live their own lives; never
seen perhaps, or even suspected, by men. That's all very silly and
fanciful, of course! But old and invalided as I am, I seem to be
diving deeper and deeper into life, and finding it full of
surprises and mysteries and utterly unexpected things."
"Well," said Howard, "I am still a child on the shore, picking up
shells, fishing in the shallows. But I have learned something of
late, and it is wonderful beyond thought--so wonderful that I feel
sometimes as if I was dreaming, and should wake up to find myself
in some other century!"
It did indeed soon dawn upon Howard that there was a change in
Maud, that their relations had somehow altered and deepened.
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