“Lady Blue, I can not be a just critic; I can not take a sentimental standpoint; you take it naturally and truly; you are right to do so; it is your mission, your calling, your election. Do not think that I despise sentiment and the ideal world of feeling—”
“You know that I do not think that,” she interrupted earnestly.
“These questions of feeling can not be tackled like a problem in mathematics, and an answer given in cold, clear cut, adequate words; such a problem I like to tackle; such an answer I like to give; but these sentimental questions in ‘Blighted Hopes’ are many sided, involved, and curvilinear; they are for the theologian, metaphysician, and mystic. What can you and I say about life’s hard questions after Ecclesiastes and Job?”
“Then you think I am presuming?”
“Did I not just say that sentiment is your mission? The story of each human life has a pathos of its own, and each is an enigma of which God only knows the solution.”
She colored and dropped her eyes; he did not dream that she knew any thing of the “pathos” in his life. How kind she would be to him!
“You are living your solution; perhaps you will help me to find mine.”
“I can’t imagine any one in the world knowing you well enough to be of any help to you.”
“Very likely; but I am not on a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds, crowned with a diadem of snow!”
“It’s a little bit warm at the foot of Mount Blanc,” she replied laughing.