"Your advice!" I shouted, with a burst of laughter. "Christopher Colum—Oh!—I—I beg your pardon, Marion, I didn't mean——"
I was too late. I am a blundering idiot at times, and my wife thought, naturally, that I was scoffing at the idea of her being qualified to give advice, when, as a matter of fact, I considered her an adept in that accomplishment. I had the painful task of explaining in detail why I had laughed, and the humiliation of admitting that, after all, it wasn't a bit odd for an old lady to crave advice from her niece.
"Anyway," Marion contended, with recurring indignation, "she isn't really old—she's only fifty-three."
"Is that all?" I inquired, with excessive surprise. "Why, she's—she's just in her prime!"
"Just what I told her!" exclaimed Marion, with approving enthusiasm. "I said she had half a lifetime before her yet."
"Certainly, she has," I agreed. "And what did she want your advice about?"
A look of ineffable sweetness, of tender, grand-maternal pride illumined Marion's countenance. I had never seen its like before, but somehow I recognized a spiritual inner consciousness made visible; an intangible something that a man of less refined and delicate perceptions would have missed. I didn't know what it meant. I do now.
"Dear Aunt Sophy," she murmured dreamily, her eyes brimming, her gaze directed through and far beyond me, in a way that made me feel transparent; "she was so happy when I settled it!"
This remark conveyed no meaning to my mind, yet something within me vibrated in sympathy to her mood, so that for a short time I sat spellbound, caring only to enjoy the subtle delight of feeling what I didn't comprehend. I remembered, years before, in a lecture on mental phenomena, hearing the difference between perception and apperception explained so minutely that my brain swiftly convoluted whenever I tried to recall the distinction; now it was clear. Marion and Aunt Sophy had apperceived together—I was apperceiving. There was an inner circle, and I was of it; yet in the midst of my enjoyment my material mind somehow detached itself, reaching out longingly for more.