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The Vehement Flame by Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
page 82 of 464 (17%)
that what she did was so brave! I couldn't make her see that the more
scared she was, the braver she was. It wouldn't have been brave in that
gump, Edith, without a nerve in her body. But why is she down on Edith?
I suppose she's a nuisance to a person with a wonderful mind like
Eleanor's. Talks too much. I'll tell her to dry up when she's with
Eleanor." And again he heard that strange voice: "You like to talk to a
_child_."

Maurice, pounding away on Edith's roof, grew hot with misery, not
because it was so terrible to have Eleanor angry with him; not even
because he had finally got mad, and answered back, and said, "Don't be
silly!" The real misery was something far deeper than this half-amused
remorse. It was that those harmless, scolding words of his held a
perfectly new idea: he had said, "Don't be silly." _Was Eleanor silly?_

Now, to a man whose feeling about his wife has been a sort of awe, this
question is terrifying. Maurice, in his boy's heart, had worshiped in
Eleanor, not just the god of Love, but the love of God. And was
she--_silly_? No! Of course not! He pounded violently, hit his thumb,
put it into his mouth, then proceeded, mumblingly, to bring his god back
from the lower shrine of a pitying heart, to the high alter of a
justifying mind: Eleanor was ill.... She was nervous.... She was an
exquisite being of mist and music and courage and love! So of course she
was sensitive to things ordinary people did not feel. Saying this, and
fitting the shingles into place, suddenly the warm and happy wave of
confident idealism began to flood in upon him, and immediately his mind
as well as his heart was satisfied. He reproached himself for having
been scared lest his star was just a common candle, like himself. He had
been cruel to judge her, as he might have judged her had she been
well--or a gump like Edith! For had she been well, she would not have
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