"If she came, it would only exhaust you and hinder your recovery. Dr Hegelmann would certainly not allow it if he knew. He's given me strict orders to chase away worry from you."
"It would worry me still more not to write that letter.... I shall be fighting for you, and that will help me to get back my sight. Please!"
"Then I'll fetch pen and paper and write for you. But we must let a week go by before posting. Every day will give you new strength."
"Through your love," she whispered.
CHAPTER XXV
WHITE LILAC
Happiness is a veil of iridescent gossamer draped over the ugliness of reality. Happiness is rooted in illusion—in the ignoring of harsh fact and jarring circumstance, and the perception only of what is beautiful and joyous.
Happiness is an impressionist painting. One takes a muddy, sullen river flanked by rotting wharves and grimy factories and huddled, festering slums, and under the mantle of evening and the veil of illusion one creates a "Nocturne in Silver." The eye of the artist finds equal beauty in the Thames by sordid Southwark and the Adriatic lapping Venice in her soft caress. The common phrase has it as "the seeing eye"—but more justly it is the ignoring eye. The artist ignores the harsh and the ugly, and transfers to his canvas only the harmonious and the poetic. He epitomises happiness.
Little children know this truth instinctively. They find their highest happiness in make-believe. A child of the slums with a rag-doll and a few beads and a scrap of faded finery can make for herself a world of fairyland. She is a princess clothed in shimmering silk and hung about with pearls and diamonds. She is courted by a knight in golden armour. She is married amidst the acclamations of a loyal populace. She is the mother of a king-to-be. She is radiantly happy.
And in her self-created world of make-believe she is far wiser than these grown-ups who insist with obstinate complacency on "seeing things as they are." They take pride in being disillusioned.