‘No, my dear, I will not say that. I do not think he was better, or wiser, or cleverer than many men that we see round us. But then we loved each other. Until you love, you cannot understand what that is; but it just makes all the happiness in life.’ Maud’s face expressed much sympathy, yet not an entire acquiescence. She hesitated a little before she asked her next question. ‘But—but—I mean, Aunt Olive, it must be heavenly to love like that, if—if—you both love and both live; but suppose—well, you know, Uncle Lorraine died. Many people lose their husbands or wives. It must be so dreadful when that happens. I should so wish I had never loved him or married him, if it was me.’ ‘No, you would not, my dear,’ answered Mrs. Lorraine, not heeding the confusion of construction or faulty grammar, but grasping the leading idea. ‘No, you would not. You would feel then, what we often heard said, about having loved and lost being better than never having loved at all. Nothing can take a great love away; not even death. It must always be a living reality; and, by-and-by, I fully believe, we shall take up the thread just where it seemed to snap, and after that there will be no more parting.’ There was a long silence after these words. Maud had never before heard her aunt speak in such a strain, and she felt half awed by it. These ideas, too, of marriage were new to her—new, at least, as the practical outcome of experience. She had read, of course, plenty of intensely sentimental writing on the subject, but naturally nobody out of their teens believes what poets and novelists say on such a subject. To hear some one speaking like that out of her own experience—one whose life she had looked upon as a sad and colourless existence, and whom she had pitied sincerely for her marriage—to hear Aunt Olive assert that she would not give up this love at any price, that what had seemed the bane, was really the blessing of her life, was startling, to say the least of it, and somewhat shook Maud’s carefully elaborated theories. ‘I should like to love like that,’ she said. ‘I think I _could_ love like that, too. But then—I’m almost sure I shall never find the right man.’ Aunt Olive shook her head gently. ‘There is no knowing, dear child. Only be true to yourself. Never marry at all, rather than give your hand without your heart.’