The Preliminaries, and Other Stories

was first

eeled into the little upstairs study and sat with my mind on chloroform liniment and flannels, while my family and

n was heaviest,

She laid back the {66} veil on the edge of her little black bonnet,--she had been a widow for two years,--brushe

er lifted in the least from her own spirit the weight of her poverty-stricken, troublous, married life; and in her outer woman she persist

t {67} the quiet, comfortable room, the snapping fire, and my own inertness, would act as a sedative. It did not occur to me that any real

omposure, my sister s

as made up her mind to leave her husband,

Lucretia! Wha

So she proposes to put an end to the relation. I judge she intends, later, to co

6

saying were so preposterous, so incredible, that I could not accept them. It was as if

Little Desire

man of thirt

in her married life? People don't do these thi

you ever know a Withacre to be lacking in words, Benjam

6

ded impatiently. Dazed though I was, my conscious

on her fingers. Her hands were shapely, though dark and shrunken, with swollen

xistence that shall be a daily development; the opportunity to give perpetual stimulus and refreshment to an utterly

7

the ot

of those absurdly swollen fortunes. Desire would n't have th

n a class and call her such women,

ooked at me

money buy you

and the glowing hearth, looking down into the heart of the fire as she spoke. I had begun to perceive, va

7

t convulsion of regions beneath the lowest seas, will sometimes force up to light of day strange flotsam from the ocean-bed. Things that the ey

rth swiftly, almo

remarriages too, I make no doubt. I've lived long enough to know that extremes are always wrong, and the middle course {72} is almost always right. I will admit, if you like, t

ducing fractures and removing appendixes, and trying to make the people who swarm to him into whole and healthy men and women. That's a good way to help the world if you do it with every ounce of {73} conscience there is in you. Here is Desire, fiddling with art and literature and civics and economics, and wanting to uplift the masses with Scandinavian dramas and me

a?" I interrupted rather shame-facedly. "Mi

shook h

about themselves. Are {74} self-centred

for I had thought t

left to worship and work for but themselves?" she demanded grimly. "Half the wo

nk you ought to allow yourself to take this thing in this way. It is r

as if she had not heard m

advances! With all my troubles, Benjamin, I am just learning why men call death gracious--and my daughter is my teacher. Desire is at the restless age. I have seen a good many women b

own fashion, "that they miss the drama of early romance, and resent the fact

putting it," she said bitterly, "

7

feel the cruel words trembling on

xciting and amusing enough. But it is her life that she throws away. She cannot make a new one that will be real and her very own. She says she has ceased to love. They always say that. But love comes and goes always. There is no such thing as perpetual joy. Love is the morning vision. We are meant to hide that {77} vision in our hearts and serve it on our knees. Good women know this and

cre

my sister back to her normal self. She dropped into her chair

rust myself to talk {78} about it. I ought to apologize

mewhat of my pois

aughter. She belongs to us. She has always been a pretty good girl. We must n't be too hard on he

deep-set eyes were burning, and

eople. You say she belongs to us. That is the {79} worst of it! You childless man! Can't you guess what it would mean to bear, to nourish, to train,--to endure and endure, to love and

o say. I recognized at last how far Lucretia in her

iolently parted waves had closed over the life of those far gray

I ought not to have seen any one so soon, but I came here with the intention of asking you to reason with her. I see it

cked up the shabby shopping-bag, quietly putting aside

erstand, for it is our blood in me that rebels. I never thought when I married a Withacre that

8