"Well, be that as it may, I've certainly come to the conclusion that it's those early impressions that make one's after-life. Somehow, they're ineradicable."
Lily believed it utterly. Searching her own lesser experience, and greater perceptions, she knew that so it had been with herself.
So would it be with her child.
"It's for me to make those early impressions true ones," she thought. "Not just ideas of blind loyalty and unreasoning trust, that later years are bound to destroy, but of self-reliance, and honesty of mind, and courage in facing things as they are."
Nicholas had said that she should bring up the child herself, and she knew that he meant it.
It was the best that she could hope for now. The perfect union of minds to whom an identical vision has been vouchsafed could never be hers and his. The marriage of body, soul and spirit, that she had once dreamed of dimly, and called by its true name of Love, she had forfeited through her marriage with Nicholas.
She had long sought to comfort herself with illusions, but she had found no strength until she had put facts into words, and stripped the truth of sentimental accessories.
In her final acceptance, she felt nearer to her husband than ever before.
It was not the fault of Nicholas that their relations to one another had been founded upon a falsity. The one wrong for which he might reproach himself had been powerless to hurt her.
They only spoke of it once again.