to run to the bottom.' The great division, he calls it, between those who
seize and those who lose. Well, the Haves aren't always seizers, I think;
often--more often, perhaps--they have only to move tranquilly through
life and let gifts drop into their hands. It's pleasant to see, if we are
not in a mood to be jarred. It's often attractive. It was mainly that
that attracted you long ago in Denis Urquhart. The need and the want in
you, who got little and lost much, was somehow vicariously satisfied by
the gifts he received from fortune; by his beauty and strength and good
luck and power of winning and keeping. He was pleasant in your eyes,
because of these gifts of his; and, indeed, they made of him a pleasant
person, since he had nothing to be unpleasant about. So your emptiness
found pleasure in his fullness, your poverty in his riches, your weakness
in his strength, and you loved him. And I think if anything could (yet)
have redeemed him, have saved him from his prosperity, it would have been
your love. But instead of letting it drag him down into the scrum and the
pity and the battle of life, he turned away from it and kept it at a
distance, and shut himself more closely between his protecting walls of
luxury and well-being. Then, again, Lucy gave him his chance; but he
hasn't (so far) followed her love either. She'd have led him, if she
could, out of the protecting, confining walls, into the open, where
people are struggling and perishing for lack of a little pity; but he
wouldn't. So far the time hasn't been ripe for his saving; his day is
still to come. It's up to all of us who care for him--and can any of us
help it?--to save him from himself. And chiefly it's your job and Lucy's.
You can do your part now only by clearing out of the way, and leaving
Lucy to do hers. She will do it, I firmly believe, in the end, if you
give her time. Lucy, I know, for I have seen it when I have been with
her, has been troubled about her own removal from the arena, about her
own being confined between walls so that she can't hear the people
outside calling; but that is mere egotism. She can hear and see all