A Fountain Sealed by Anne Douglas Sedgwick
page 120 of 358 (33%)
page 120 of 358 (33%)
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Imogen, though smiling gravely too, shook her head. "I'm afraid that I'm
only your last toy, mama darling. You have come over here to see if you can make me happy, just as if you were refurnishing a house. But, you see, my happiness doesn't depend on you." "You are hard on me, Imogen." "No; no; I mean to be so gentle. It's such a dangerous view of life--that centering it on some one else, making them an end. I feel so differently about life. I think that our love for others is only sound and true when it helps them to power of service to some shared ideal. Your love for me isn't like that. It's only an instinctive craving. Forgive me if I seem ruthless. I only want to help you to see clearly, dear." Valerie, still holding her daughter's hands, looked away from her and around the room with a glance at once vague and a little wild. "I don't know what to say to you," she murmured. "You make all that I mean wither." She was sad; her ardor had dropped from her. She was not at all convicted of error; indeed, she was trying, so it seemed, to convict her, Imogen, of one. Imogen felt a cold resistance rising within her to meet this misinterpretation. "On the contrary, dear," she said, "it is just the poetry, the reality of life, in all its stern glory,--because it is and must be stern if it is to be spiritual,--it is just that, it seems to me, that you are trying to reduce to a sort of pretty, facile lyric." Valerie still held the girl's hands very tightly, as though grasping hard some dying hope. And looking down upon the ground she stood silent for some |
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