So they cease their sinning, Emmy; and as long as I am in torment, I may hope for grace. We talked of the irony. It means, the pain of fire.'
'I spoke of the irony to Redworth,' said Emma; 'incidentally, of course.'
'And he fumed?'
'He is really not altogether the Mr. Cuthbert Dering of your caricature. He is never less than acceptably rational. I won't repeat his truisms; but he said, or I deduced from what he said, that a grandmother's maxims would expound the enigma.'
'Probably the simple is the deep, in relation to the mysteries of life,' said Diana, whose wits had been pricked to a momentary activity by the letter. 'He behaves wisely; so perhaps we are bound to take his words for wisdom. Much nonsense is talked and written, and he is one of the world's reserves, who need no more than enrolling, to make a sturdy phalanx of common sense. It's a pity they are not enlisted and drilled to express themselves.' She relapsed. 'But neither he nor any of them could understand my case.'
'He puts the idea of an irony down to the guilt of impatience, Tony.'
'Could there be a keener irony than that? A friend of Dada's waited patiently for a small fortune, and when it arrived, he was a worn-out man, just assisted to go decently to his grave.'
'But he may have gained in spirit by his patient waiting.'
'Oh! true. We are warmer if we travel on foot sunward, but it is a discovery that we are colder if we take to ballooning upward. The material good reverses its benefits the more nearly we clasp it. All life is a lesson that we live to enjoy but in the spirit. I will brood on your saying.'
'It is your own saying, silly Tony, as the only things worth saying always, are!' exclaimed Emma, as she smiled happily to see her friend's mind reviving, though it was faintly and in the dark.