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The Vehement Flame by Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
page 61 of 464 (13%)
It was only Maurice who found all the scares--just as he found the
silences and small jealousies--adorable! The silences meant unspeakable
depths of thought; the jealousies were a sign of love. The terrors
called for his protecting strength! One of the unfair irrationalities
of love is that it may, at first, be attracted by the defects of the
beloved, and later repelled by them. Maurice loved Eleanor for her
defects. Once, when he and Edith were helping Mrs. Houghton weed her
garden, he stopped grubbing, and sat down in the gold and bronze glitter
of coreopsis, to expatiate upon the exquisiteness of the defects. Her
wonderful mind: "She doesn't talk, because she is always thinking; her
ideas are way over _my_ head!" Her funny timidity: "She wants me to
take care of her!" Her love: "She's--it sounds absurd!--but she's
jealous, because she's so--well, fond of me, don't you know, that she
sort of objects to having people round. Did you ever hear of anything so
absurd?"

"I certainly never did," his old friend said, dryly.

"Well, but"--Maurice defended his wife--"it's because she cares about
me, don't you know? She--well, this is in confidence--she said once that
she'd like to live on a desert island, just with me!"

"So would I," said Edith. Her mother laughed:

"Tell her desert islands have to have a 'man Friday'--to say nothing of
a few 'women Thursdays'!"

Eleanor was, Maurice said, like music heard far off, through mists and
moonlight in a dark garden, "full of--of--what are those sweet-smelling
things, that bloom only at night?" (Mary Houghton looked fatigued.)
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