"Dear Lucia, will you hear me a moment? I have something to tell you
and would like to have it off my mind before we go to bed."
We had just come home from a court banquet and in our gala dress stood
looking over the letters which had arrived that night. Lucia looked up
interestedly.
"Come to my room with me then," she said, and then regarding me: "It is
surely something good, isn't it? I haven't seen you in such good
spirits for a long time."
I followed her silently. When we were seated quietly I realized what a
vast abyss yawned between our two worlds and what a foolish undertaking
was the endeavor to bridge it. I spoke slowly -
"Yes, it is something good, something very good. But I don't know
whether I shall succeed in convincing you of that."
Lucia harkened attentively, and again and again I paused a moment, so
as to proceed with careful precision in my endeavors to bring about an
understanding.
"So you have noticed that I am in better spirits now, or rather that I
am happier than I was. It is so and it proves to you that something
good has happened. I was not happy because there was something lacking
in my life, something that I can with difficulty explain to you. And
now I have found it, and it opens up for me a glorious prospect of
peace and rest, of the highest content that any human being can expect.
A vast sea, a calm ocean of peace and joy.?"
Lucia waited and listened intently.
"Let me begin by saying that I am profoundly grateful to you for your
faithful love, your care for me, for our children, our home. And also
this - that my affection from the day of our marriage until to-day has
never weakened, but constantly grown deeper. Will you believe me when I
tell you this?"
Lucia nodded mutely. But I saw the shadow passing over her pretty,
placid countenance and the frown contracting the white, still youthful
brow.
"If you have ever loved me and believed in me, I now call upon this
love and this faith. Does not love signify to desire the happiness of
the loved one and faith to believe that he himself can best know and
judge of this happiness??"
"Well?" said Lucia. "Where are you leading to?"
"Would it be possible for you to believe that it detracts nothing from
a great affection, nothing, nothing, to have a still greater love
complement it? Yes, that the power of a very great love even
strengthens and unites in us all other affections. Can you feel
something of the truth of:
'True love in this differs from gold and clay