She bestowed the attractions and charm of her social and intellectual nature less on those outside than those inside her home. You saw her at her best when talking to her father and mother.
Some parents let their children outgrow them intellectually, so that there is a great gulf fixed between parents and children, the latter having nothing in common with the former. Mr. and Mrs. Wheelwright tried as much as possible to keep themselves in advance of their daughter's intellectual growth, so that they might always command her respect for their opinions, and that she might realize that in them she found two interesting, intelligent companions, whom she could love and confide in.
The relationship between many parents and their grown children is very unsatisfactory; for being on the material plane, there is nothing very permanent in their relationship. The grown son and his father have only in common business and social interests; that is their world; outside of that neither one has any life that he realizes.
It is the same with the grown daughters and their mother. Their life is mainly in the social and domestic world. Outside of that they apparently have no existence; but the true ideal parents and children are those whose life is in the intellectual and spiritual world. They cease to exist in each other's minds as parents and children, and realize a stronger and more permanent tie, and intellectual and spiritual union, which is blessed, glorious, and eternal. They realize daily that "In Him they live, and breathe, and have their being"; that they are immersed in an ocean of Divine love, and that Divine love permeates them all through and through; and that it is in that ocean of Divine love that they realize that they are one. They feel a blessed nearness and dearness and oneness to each other, though separated by oceans and continents, for they have realized through sweet experience that the same intelligent spiritual thought and love pulses through them all as if they were one organism.
CHAPTER VII.
PENLOE.
One afternoon Mrs. Herne received a caller. It was Mrs. Cullom. She had met Mrs. Herne twice at parties and promised to call on her each time, but for various reasons she had not been able to fulfil her promise.
After the usual introductory talk, Mrs. Cullom said: