Afterward we find that we must turn out for the obstacles--cross the
rivers where they're shallowest--take the tracks that others have
beaten--make all sorts of unexpected concessions. Life is made up of
compromises: that is what youth refuses to understand. I've lived
long enough to doubt whether any real good ever came of sacrificing
beautiful facts to even more beautiful theories. Do I seem
casuistical? I don't know--there may be losses either way...but
the love of the man one loves...of the child one loves...
that makes up for everything...."
She had spoken with a thrill which seemed to communicate itself to
the hand her listener had left in hers. Her eyes filled suddenly,
but through their dimness she saw the girl's lips shape a last
desperate denial:
"Don't you see it's because I feel all this that I mustn't--that I
can't?"
III
Mrs. Quentin, in the late spring afternoon, had turned in at the
doors of the Metropolitan Museum. She had been walking in the Park,
in a solitude oppressed by the ever-present sense of her son's
trouble, and had suddenly remembered that some one had added a
Beltraffio to the collection. It was an old habit of Mrs. Quentin's
to seek in the enjoyment of the beautiful the distraction that most
of her acquaintances appeared to find in each other's company. She
had few friends, and their society was welcome to her only in her
more superficial moods; but she could drug anxiety with a picture as
some women can soothe it with a bonnet.
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