"When, grandmother?" she asked. "Why should I want to laugh?"
"Never mind. But you will. And when you do, you say to yourself that, after all, youth and age are just about the same, only age has tested many things and found they're no good. So if it finds something that seems good—well, Electra, you're off on your fool's errand. Don't you deny other folks the comfort of theirs."
"I don't understand you, grandmother."
"No, of course you don't. But you will. Once I shouldn't have cared whether you did or not, but I've taken a kind of a liking to you. I told you I should when you turned human and made a fool of yourself like the rest of us. And now you're going out into the wilderness, to found a city or something of that sort."
"I am going to help the Brotherhood," said Electra, with punctilious truth.
"And build a monument to that handsome scamp that had the bad taste to come over here to die."
"Grandmother, you must not use such words."
"Must not? Don't you suppose I know a scamp when I see one? If I'd been fifty years younger, I dare say I should be starting out to build him a monument, too. But I'm glad of it, child, I'm glad of it. He's your preserver. He has roused in you the capacity for being a fool. Make much of it. Prize it. It's God's most blessed gift to man. When you've lost that, you've lost everything."
"There is the carriage, grandmother. I must go."
Madam Fulton presented a kindly cheek.