He said something of this to Maud, speaking of the happiness that she had brought him. She said, "Ah, you can't expect me to realise that! I feel as though you were giving everything and receiving nothing, as if I were one more of the duties you had adopted. Of course, I hope that I may be of some use, some time; but I feel at present as if you had been striding on your way somewhere, and had turned aside to comfort and help a little child by the roadside who had lost his way!"
"Oh," said Howard, "it's not that; it isn't only that you are the joy and light of my life; it is as if something very far away and powerful had come nearer to both of us, and had lifted us on its wings—what if it were God?"
"Yes," said Maud musingly, "I think it is that!"
XXVI
LOVE IS ENOUGH
The days slipped past, one by one, with an incredible swiftness. For the first time in his life Howard experienced the extraordinary sensation of having nothing to do, no plans ahead, nothing but the delight of the hour to taste. One day he said to Maud, "It seems almost wicked to be so deliciously idle—some day I suppose we must make some plans. But I do not seem ever to have lived before; and all that I ever did and thought of seems as small and trivial as a little town seen from the top of a tower—one can't conceive what the little creatures are about in their tiny slits of streets and stuffy houses, crawling about like beetles on some ridiculous business. The first thing I shall do when I get back will be to burn my old book; such wretched, stodgy, unenlightened stuff as it all is; like the fancies of a blind man about the view of a landscape."
"Oh no, you mustn't do that," said Maud. "I have set my heart on your writing a great book. You must do that—you must finish this one. I am not going to keep you all to myself, like a man pushing about a perambulator."
"Well, I will begin a new book," said Howard, "and steal an old title. It shall be called Love is Enough."
On the last night before they left the cottage they talked long about things past, present, and to come.