"Well," said Howard, smiling, "you are two very wonderful women, and that's the truth. I am not surprised at YOUR wisdom--it IS wisdom--because you have lived very bravely and loved many people; but it's amazing to me to find such courage and understanding in a girl. Of course you have helped her--but I don't think you could have produced such thoughts in her unless they had been there to start with." "That's exactly what I have tried to say," said Mrs. Graves. "Where did Maud's fine mixture of feeling and commonsense come from? Her mother was a woman of some perception, but after all she married Frank, and Frank with all his virtue isn't a very mature spirit!" "Ah," said Howard, "my marriage has done everything for me! What a blind, complacent, petty ass I was--and am too, though I at least perceive it! I see myself as an elderly donkey, braying and capering about in a paddock--and someone leans over the fence, and all is changed. I ought not to think lightly of mysteries, when all this astonishing conspiracy has taken place round me, to give me a home and a wife and a whole range of new emotions--how Maud came to care for me is still the deepest wonder of all--a loveless prig like me!" "I won't be understood to subscribe to all that," said Mrs. Graves, laughing, "though I see your point of view; but there's something deeper even than that, dear Howard. You care for me, you care for Maud; but it's the power of caring that matters more than the power of caring for particular people. Does that seem a very hard saying? You see I do not believe--what do you say to this--in memory lasting. You and I love each other here and now; when I die, I do not feel sure that I shall have any recollection of you or Maud or my own dear husband--how horrible that would sound to many men and nearly all women--but I have learned how to love, and you have learned how to love, and we shall find other souls to draw near to as the ages go on; and so I look forward to death calmly enough, because whatever I am I shall have souls to love, and I shall find souls to love me." "No," said Howard, "I can't believe that! I can't believe in any life here or hereafter apart from Maud. It is strange that I should be the sentimentalist now, and you the stern sceptic. The thought to me is infinitely dreary--even atrocious."