“They are the Three-per-Cents of Romance,” said I.
“Yes; one wears diamonds as one wears shoes. They mean nothing to one individually. They are social stones, even democratic. They are impervious to association. They are like the sun—every one loves sunlight, but no one has ever thought of sentimentally annexing the sun. The sun is not romantic. It is a wholesome, prosperous presence in our lives, but it is impossible to think of it as personally related to ourselves—whereas the moon, on the other hand, means just ‘us’ and no one else in the world to every romantic eye that looks up to it. The diamond is the sun of precious stones, the opal is the moon.”
“But what of the pearl?”
“The pearl is the Evening Star.”
“Tell me,” I said, “if I may ask, do your opals stand for sorrows gone by or for sorrows to come?”
“You mustn’t be so literal,” she answered, “one can hardly label one’s sorrows like that. Sorrow is temperamental, not accidental; it is attitude rather than history; it comes even more from within than from without. Some natures attract it—as the moon draws the sea. When I speak of my sorrows I do not mean my personal history—did you think my opals stood for so many disappointments?”
She laughed disdainfully.
“No,” she continued, “few of us, alas! are real enough to achieve the distinction of a great sorrow. A great sorrow is as rare as a great work of art. To know a really beautiful sorrow of our own, one needs to have a tragic simplicity of nature which belongs only to a few chosen temperaments; and if, indeed, a beautiful sorrow should come into our lives, who knows but that we should miss its beauty in its pain! Just as we have musicians to make our music for us, we have to rely on others for our sorrows.”
“It is strange how much more distinguished sorrow is than joy,” said I.
“Yes; and yet I suppose it is a part of what, resist it as we may, seems to be the natural law of renunciation. The weak nature may be crushed and lowered by renunciation, but the strong nature seems to be mysteriously refined. Perhaps, indeed, it is scarcely correct to speak of a weak nature renouncing. Things are taken from it rather than renounced. Renunciation implies will, and the exercise of strength. And thus to be able to do without implies an individual greatness and sufficiency from the beginning. We probably never renounce anything that we really need. Whatever the reason, however, there is no doubt that, as you say, the world is conscious of a certain distinction, and even romantic beauty attaching to sorrow which it does not associate with joy. Sorrow seems to imply a certain initiation into the arcana of human experience, a certain direct relation with the regent powers of our destiny, august and hidden, and only revealing their supernatural faces to this and that mortal here and there, henceforth stricken, and, so to say, ‘enchanted’, as one touched by the sacred lightning and yet alive among men.”