"
"That's exactly what I have tried to say," said Mrs. Graves. "Where
did Maud's fine mixture of feeling and commonsense come from? Her
mother was a woman of some perception, but after all she married
Frank, and Frank with all his virtue isn't a very mature spirit!"
"Ah," said Howard, "my marriage has done everything for me! What a
blind, complacent, petty ass I was--and am too, though I at least
perceive it! I see myself as an elderly donkey, braying and
capering about in a paddock--and someone leans over the fence, and
all is changed. I ought not to think lightly of mysteries, when all
this astonishing conspiracy has taken place round me, to give me a
home and a wife and a whole range of new emotions--how Maud came to
care for me is still the deepest wonder of all--a loveless prig
like me!"
"I won't be understood to subscribe to all that," said Mrs. Graves,
laughing, "though I see your point of view; but there's something
deeper even than that, dear Howard. You care for me, you care for
Maud; but it's the power of caring that matters more than the power
of caring for particular people. Does that seem a very hard saying?
You see I do not believe--what do you say to this--in memory
lasting. You and I love each other here and now; when I die, I do
not feel sure that I shall have any recollection of you or Maud or
my own dear husband--how horrible that would sound to many men and
nearly all women--but I have learned how to love, and you have
learned how to love, and we shall find other souls to draw near to
as the ages go on; and so I look forward to death calmly enough,
because whatever I am I shall have souls to love, and I shall find
souls to love me.
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