"She thinks it's real love she feels for Ted. And as long as she thinks so, Peter, she'll be happy. What we have to do for her--what you have to do for her when I'm gone--is to keep her thinking that. It isn't her baffled gift I worry about; it's the discontent her gift may rouse in her; the awful _vision_ it may bring her. I see so clearly how she was married--and she must _never_ see! If ever you find her beginning to see, you must blindfold her somehow. I've often thought that women should be born blind--or that their eyes should be bandaged at birth." "Horrible!" exclaimed Peter. "No--_kind_! All the creatures of our love would be beautiful then; all the circumstances of our little destinies noble and splendid. We'd create them so in our own minds, and disillusionment could never touch us." "It's the truth we need, men and women," insisted Peter. "There's nothing so tragic as the truth--when it comes too late," said Mrs. Caldwell sadly. "Your grandfather and I found out that. He was already married, and I was on the eve of my wedding when--it happened. We might have run away together; ours was a real passion, Peter. But people didn't do that sort of thing so readily in our young days. They thought less of their individual rights then, and more of honor. It seemed to us that it was sin enough ever to have realized what we felt; ever to have acknowledged it. So we went on with our obligations, your grandfather and I. He was a good husband, and I was a good wife. Our lives were cast in pleasant lines, with dear, kindly companions, and we would have been happy if--if I hadn't, in a fatal hour, seen his heart and reflected it for him in my own eyes. We would have been happy if I had been blindfolded! As it was, we'd seen the truth, and to accept less was tragedy for us." "You were both free at last," said Peter. "Why didn't you--Oh, why _didn't_ you--take what was left to you?" "My dear, we were already old. Romance was still in our hearts, but we hadn't the courage to take it, publicly, into our lives. We had felt a great love, and been brave enough to deny it. But when we could have satisfied it honorably--we were afraid of the change in our lives; we were afraid of our children, of your father and Sheila's; we were even afraid of what the town would say! In the beginning we had striven not to dare. In the end we could not dare. It is sad that we should be like that, isn't it, Peter? It's sad that as the strength of our youth goes from us, the valor of our love should go too. But it is so, it is so for all of us, my dear. The day before your grandfather died, something flamed up in us again. The courage of new life came to him, and he made me promise to marry him the next day. But the next day he was--dead!"