"Yes, I do. I know more than you think. I know that the things that
trouble you are dreams and that our life together is reality. You’ll
tell me the dreams as we go on—a little at a time—and I’ll show you that
you’ve waked from them. I know there are things to explain; but I know,
too, that there’s an explanation. But I don’t want the explanation yet.
I’m—I’m too tired, Jennie. I want to rest. And I can’t rest unless we
all rest together—you with me—and the girls with us—in a kind of quiet
acceptance of the things that have happened—and in the—I hardly know how
to express it—but in the tranquillity of love. I wonder if you
understand me?"
She murmured:
"I don’t know that I understand you, Bob—quite—but I do—I do love you.
It’s—it’s different from love—it’s—it’s more. It’s like—like melting
into you—"
"That’s love, Jennie. It isn’t anything different. It’s just—_love_."
"But you’re so big—"
"And you’re so little—so wee. Don’t you see?—that’s it! That’s the
compensating thing in nature. It’s because we’re different that we need
each other and complete each other. I can’t explain it as you’d explain
a sum in arithmetic. I only _know_. You complete me, Jennie. As I’ve
said so often, you’re the other half of me—"
"And you’re all of me—and more."
"Then since we know that, why not do as I said—just rest awhile? We’ve
come up to our next ledge, as I was trying to explain to you a few
months ago; I know we can camp here a bit; and if we’ve had some
scratches in the climb we can talk of them by and by. We’ve learned the
one big thing we needed to know—that we belong together, that we can’t
be torn apart. Just for now, why can’t that be enough for us?"
"It will be enough if you will let me tell you that—that what I’ve said
about Hubert wasn’t—wasn’t as bad as perhaps you think. I don’t say it
mightn’t have been; it was as bad as that in—in intention; but the magic
cloak of your love which you used to write about seemed to hang round
me—that’s the only way I can put it—"
"That’ll do, Jennie. Don’t try to say any more now. It’s only what—in
some way—I can’t tell you how—I know already."
He knew she was crying, but he let her cry. He would have cried himself,
only that, since the vision at Bond’s Corner, he felt this extraordinary
happiness. While his reason would have striven to accept the
psychologist’s explanation his inner self was convinced of Teddy’s
delight in beginning his next experiment. He himself was tired, but at
peace—tired, but no longer with a need of sleep—only with the need of
being quiet with a sense of fulfillment.
There were tears in her voice as she whispered, brokenly:
"Is it wrong, Bob, to feel so—so comforted—when momma is lying
upstairs—and darling Teddy is—"
"We can’t choose the way by which comfort comes to us, Jennie darling.
Things happen which we don’t want to have happen, and yet they _can_
work together for good if we only give them half a chance—"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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