“Death,” he said, “is the one element in human affairs which may not be estimated in that general way. If your mother’s heart was affected, she was far more likely to die of some sudden excitement than because of a not very poignant anxiety as to your prolonged absence from home. I suppose, in a sense, she knew where you were?”
“Yes. I—I deceived her with sufficient skill,” came the morbid retort.
“Then you must school yourself to dwell on those long years of pleasant companionship in the past rather than this final parting, which you attribute to a cause that exists only in your imagination. I think Tennyson’s philosophy is at fault in the line:
‘Sorrow’s crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.’
I hold that Cowper peered more closely into the fiber and essence of humanity when he wrote:
‘The path of sorrow, and that path alone,
Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown;
No traveler ever reached that blest abode
Who found not thorns and briars in his road.’
You were utterly unnerved and wretched when the news of your mother’s illness reached you. You magnified your personal responsibility out of all reasonable proportion. I can see no proof of other influence than the fixed course and final outcome of a disease difficult to detect and incapable of cure.”
They were nearing the Gulch, Power having chosen that direction because of the uninterrupted view of the surrounding country they would secure from the top of the rising ground.
“I wish I might accept your comforting theory,” he said, more composedly. “Somehow, I feel that I am to blame, or, if that is a crude expression, that I was made the instrument of some devilish act of retribution. However, I do not profess myself able to regard such a problem in a critical light today. You won’t think me heartless if I inquire into the conditions which led up to the telegram you sent me in New York? I was too dazed that morning to understand clearly what had happened. Did you actually speak to Nancy herself over the telephone?”