"
I fancy we must have sat in silence for quite a long while; for the
moon, creeping upward past the wood, had flooded the fields again
with light before Robina spoke.
"Then all love is needless," she said, "we could do better without
it, choose with more discretion. If it is only something that
worries us for a little while and then passes, what is the sense of
it?"
"You could ask the same question of Life itself," I said; "'something
that worries us for a little while, then passes.' Perhaps the
'worry,' as you call it, has its uses. Volcanic upheavals are
necessary to the making of a world. Without them the ground would
remain rock-bound, unfitted for its purposes. That explosion of
Youth's pent-up forces that we term Love serves to the making of man
and woman. It does not die, it takes new shape. The blossom fades
as the fruit forms. The passion passes to give place to peace. The
trembling lover has become the helper, the comforter, the husband."
"But the failures," Robina persisted; "I do not mean the silly or the
wicked people; but the people who begin by really loving one another,
only to end in disliking--almost hating one another. How do THEY get
there?"
"Sit down," I said, "and I will tell you a story.
"Once upon a time there was a girl, and a boy who loved her. She was
a clever, brilliant girl, and she had the face of an angel. They
lived near to one another, seeing each other almost daily.
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