“Sorrows! If you said pleasures, you would be nearer the mark. It is pleasure, not sorrow, that makes the butterfly’s wings turn grey.”
“One’s sorrows are one’s pleasures—are they not?” I retorted.
“Yes!” said the Sphinx, wistfully, “you are right. ‘Of our tears she hath made us pearls, and of our sobbing she hath made unto us a song’—who said that? Was it you?”
“Very likely,” said I.
“Yes! you are right,” she continued. “Our pleasures we could spare—but not our sorrows—our beautiful sorrows.”
“Sorrows,” I ventured, “are the opals of the soul.”
Then the Sphinx stretched her opalled hand across the table and patted mine and said, “You dear,” just as in the old days.
The tears came to my eyes.
“Mark your influence!” I said. “That is the first good thing I have said for four years.”
“What appalling faithfulness!” laughed the Sphinx. “But I would rather a man were faithful to me with his brain than with his heart. It means more. Faithful hearts are comparatively common—but when a man is faithful with his brain....”