“I was thinking that, that----” He spoke slowly and hesitatingly, as though he were distrustful of his own thoughts and ashamed of his own words. “You see, there are moments when symptoms of this kind betoken that, if a woman has nothing radically wrong with her health, she has reached maturity--has arrived at the stage when life’s growth becomes arrested, and there remains for her no further problem to solve.” “Then you mean that I am growing old?” she interrupted sharply. “How can you say that? I am still young and strong.” And she drew herself up as she spoke. He smiled. “Do not fear,” he said. “You are not of the kind that will ever grow old. True, in old age one’s energies fail, and one ceases to battle with life; but that is a very different thing. Provided it be what I take it to be, your sense of depression and weariness is a sign of vigour. Frequently the growings of a vivid, excitable intellect transcend the limits of everyday existence, and, finding no answer to what that intellect demands of life, become converted into despondency and a temporary dissatisfaction with life. The meaning of it is that the soul is sorrowful at having to ask life its secret. Perhaps such is the case with _you_. If so, you need not term it folly.” She sighed, but, apparently, with relief at the thought that the danger was over, and that she had not fallen in her husband’s estimation. “I am quite happy,” she repeated, “nor do I spend my time in dreaming, nor is my life monotonous. What more, then, is there for me to have? What do these questionings portend? They harass me like a sickness.” “They are a spur to encourage a weak, groping intellect which has lacked full preparation. True, such depression and self-questionings have caused many to lose their senses; but to others they seem mere formless visions, a mere fever of the brain.” “To think that just when one’s happiness is full to overflowing, and one is thoroughly in love with life, there should come upon one a taint of sorrow!” she murmured. “Yes; such is the payment exacted for the Promethean fire. You must not only endure, you must even love and respect, the sorrow and the doubts and the self-questionings of which you have spoken: for they constitute the excess, the luxury, of life, and show themselves most when happiness is at its zenith, and has alloyed with it no gross desires. Such troubles are powerless to spring to birth amid life which is ordinary and everyday; they cannot touch the individual who is forced to endure hardship and want. That is why the bulk of the crowd goes on its way without ever experiencing the cloud of doubt, the pain of self-questioning. To him or to her, however, who _voluntarily_ goes to meet those difficulties they become welcome guests, not a scourge.” “But one can never get even with them. To almost every one they bring sorrow and indifference.”