"Another thing. Don't try not to grieve. Don't repress yourself. It is right that you should mourn over your lost ideals. Nothing on earth brings more poignant grief than that. You will never get them back. Do not expect what is impossible. They were false ideals, none the less beautiful and dear to you for being that, but truly they were distorted. You will see this some time. You have begun to see it now. You realize that this man was in no way what you thought him. You had idealized him, had almost crowned him. Now you can't help trying to invest Mr. Whitehouse with the same unnamable, invisible qualities. But no man has them. Your husband is a thousand times more worthy than the other, yet even he does not deserve worship. Let the man do the crowning if you can, although a woman of your temperament would find even that difficult--that which the most inane of women could accept with calmness and a smile. You have the magnificent humility of the truly great. Still it is not appreciated in this world. Try resting for a while and let your husband love you." I knew that I was saying, though perhaps in a different way, things which Norris Whitehouse had urged upon her. Not that she said so. She would have regarded that as sacrilege. But it was a look, a little trembling smile, which betrayed the ingenuous young creature to me. I felt that I was in the presence of a nature very fair and exquisitely pure. It was a sacred feeling. I almost felt as if I ought not to read the signs in her face, because she had no idea that they were there. "I have such horrible doubts," she said suddenly with suppressed bitterness. "I do not belittle my love. I know that I loved him with all my heart and soul, and that I gave him more than most women would have done, because love means infinitely more to me than it does to them. I knew all the time that I loved him more than he loved me, but I did not care, for I believed, blind as I was, that we loved each other all we were capable of doing, and if I had more love to give it was only because I was richer than he, and I meant to make him the greater by my treasure. Now I feel that both I and my love have been wasted. Oh, it was a cruel thing, Ruth. I feel so poor, so poor." "Louise, you think, but you do not think rightly. _Are_ you poorer for having loved him? What is his unworth compared with your worth? Isn't your love sweeter and truer for having grown and expanded? No love was ever wasted. It enriches the giver involuntarily. You are a sweeter, better woman than before you loved, unless you made the mistake of small natures and let it embitter you. You have no right to feel that it has been wasted."