You were like a figure in heaven that drew me up to you.
"Well, that lasted quite a while into our marriage; at first I had an
even greater emotion. Then, as Helena and Gregory were born, it
changed." Midway in the brushing of her hair Fanny was motionless and
intent. "I don't say it decreased, Fanny, that it lost any of its
importance; but it did change; and in you as well as me. It wasn't as
prismatic, as musical, and there's no use contradicting me. I can
explain it best for myself by saying that my feeling for you became
largely tenderness."
"Oh!" Fanny exclaimed, in a little lifting gasp; "oh, and that
tenderness," her cheeks were bright with sudden color, "why, it is no
more than pity."
"That isn't just," he replied; "unless you want to speak of pity at its
very best. No, that won't do: my affection for you is made of all our
experiences, our lives and emotions, together. We are tied by a
thousand strings--common disappointments and joy and sickness and hope
and pain and heaven knows what else. We're held by habit, too, and
convenience and the opinion of society. Certainly it is no smaller than
the first," he argued, but more to himself than to Fanny; "that was
nothing but a state of mind, of spirit; you can't live on music."
"Don't you think you have said enough for one night?" she asked, in a
calm voice belied by the angry sparkle of her eyes, the faint
irrepressible trembling of her lips.
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