"For it is a great thing, Mistress Anne, to have written a book. In all of my pot-boiling days I would never have believed it. A plot was a plot, and presto, the thing was done! The world read and forgot. But the world doesn't forget. Not when we give our best, and when we aim to get below the surface things and the shallow things and call up out of men's hearts that which, in these practical days, they try to hide.
"I suppose Brooks has told you about my eyes, and of how it may happen that I shall, for the rest of my life, be able to see through a glass darkly.
"That is something to be thankful for, isn't it? It is a rather weird experience when, having adjusted one's self in anticipation of a catastrophe, the catastrophe hangs fire. Like old Pepys, I had resigned myself to the inevitable—indeed in those awful waiting days I read, more than once, the last paragraph of his diary.
"'And so I betake myself to that course which it is almost as much as to see myself go into my grave; for which, and all the discomforts that will accompany my being blind, the good God prepare me!'
"Yet Pepys kept his sight all the rest of his life, and regretted, I fancy, more than once, that he did not finish his diary. And, perhaps, I, too, shall be granted this dim vision until the end.
"It seems to me that there are many things which I ought to tell you—I know there are a thousand things which are forbidden. But at least I can speak of Diogenes. I saw him at Crossroads the other day, much puffed up with pride of family. And I can speak of Mrs. Nancy, who is a white shadow of herself. Why doesn't Brooks see it? He was down here for a week recently, and he didn't seem to realize that anything was wrong. Perhaps she is always so radiant when he comes that she dazzles his eyes.
"She and Miss Sulie are a pathetic pair. I meet them on the road on their errands of mercy. They are like two sisters of charity in their long capes and little bonnets. Evidently Mrs. Brooks feels that if her son cannot doctor the community she can at least nurse it. The country folks adore her, and go to her for advice, so that Crossroads still opens wide its doors to the people, as it did in the days of old Dr. Brooks.
"And now, does the Princess still serve? I can see you with your blue bowl on your way to Peggy, and stopping on the stairs to light for me the torch of inspiration. And now all of this service and inspiration is being spilled at the feet of—Marie-Louise! Will you give her greetings, and ask her how soon I may come and worship at the shrine of her grinning old god?"
Anne, carrying his letter to Marie-Louise, asked, "Shall I tell him to come?"
"Yes. I didn't want him to go away, but he said he must—that he couldn't write here. But I knew why he went, and you knew."