“He isn’t,” said Elizabeth, “in the remotest degree what I imagined him, except for his size. He—well, it is extraordinarily difficult to describe him.”
“You feel that?”
“There’s something so childlike about him,” pursued Elizabeth. “If I were to attempt to put into words what I mean, he seems to me like a child, who had started out to get something, entirely sure that he wanted it; and then, when he found it in his grasp, he discovered it to be totally different from what he imagined it. He expected a sort of toy, and he has found an enormous responsibility. He doesn’t know what to make of it. He is utterly perplexed, and it hasn’t occurred to him that the simplest plan would be to renounce it.”
John opened eyes of wonder.
“I always knew you were shrewd, my dear Elizabeth,” he remarked, “but how you have arrived at these conclusions in so brief a space of time, beats me altogether.”
“Then you think I’m right?” she demanded.
“I am pretty sure of it. But the thing is, that he sees the responsibility without exactly recognizing it, and, as you say, the simple way out of the difficulty hasn’t occurred to him in consequence.”
Elizabeth mused, looking at the running water.
“But that’s not all,” she went on. “There’s more I can’t fathom. These are merely material difficulties to grapple with. He is faced with something deeper. You can call me absurd if you like. I daresay I am being a little exalté, but he has a look in his eyes as if he had caught a glimpse of the Vision Beautiful, and he is a bit bewildered.”
“Oh, no,” said John quietly, “I’ll not call you absurd.”