The Vehement Flame by Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
page 61 of 464 (13%)
page 61 of 464 (13%)
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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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