"Whatever can thou mean? God has appointed Time to console all loss and all grief. Martha will go further and further away as the days wear on
and Jane will forget—we all do—we all hev to forget."
"Some die of grief."
"Not they. They may induce some disease, to which they are disposed by inordinate and sinful sorrow—and die of that—no one dies of grief, or grief would be our most common cause of death. I think Jane will come out of the Valley of the Shadow a finer and better woman—she was always of a very superior kind."
"Mother, you allude to something that troubles me. I have seen Jane bear and do things lately that a year ago she would have indignantly refused to tolerate. Is not this a decadence in her superior nature?"
"Thou art speaking too fine for my understanding. If thou means by 'decadence' that Jane is growing worse instead of better, then thou art far wrong—and if it were that way, I would not wonder if some of the blame—maybe the main part of it—isn't thy fault. Men don't understand women. How can they?"
"Why not?"
"Well, if the Bible is correct, women were made after men. They were the Almighty's improvement on his first effort. There's very few men that I know—or have ever known—that have yet learned to model themselves after the improvement. It's easier for them to manifest the old Adam, and so they go on living and dying and living and dying and
remain only men and never learn to understand a woman."
John laughed and asked, "Have you ever known an improved man, mother?"