"No; but they know it generally does."
"Can't you see, Nona, that that's just what makes it? Being prepared to suffer is really the way to create suffering. And creating suffering is creating sin, because sin and suffering are really one. We ought to refuse ourselves to pain. All the great Healers have taught us that."
Nona lifted her eyebrows in the slightly disturbing way she had. "Did Christ?"
Pauline felt her colour rise. This habit of irrelevant and rather impertinent retort was growing on Nona. The idea of stirring up the troublesome mysteries of Christian dogma at the breakfast-table! Pauline had no intention of attacking any religion. But Nona was really getting as querulous as a teething child. Perhaps that was what she was, morally; perhaps some new experience was forcing its way through the tender flesh of her soul. The suggestion was disturbing to all Pauline's theories; yet confronted with her daughter's face and voice she could only take refuge in the idea that Nona, unable to attain the Higher Harmony, was struggling in a crepuscular wretchedness from which she refused to be freed.
"If you'd only come to Gobine with me, dear, these problems would never trouble you any more."
"They don't now—not an atom. What troubles me is the plain human tangle, as it remains after we've done our best to straighten it out. Look at Mrs. Bruss!"
"But the doctors say there's every chance—"
"Did you ever know them not to, after a first operation for cancer?"
"Of course, Nona, if you take sorrow and suffering for granted—"
"I don't, mother; but, apparently, Somebody does, judging from their diffusion and persistency, as the natural history books say."