"I have been smiling all day," she sometimes said to him. "People have
asked me why I looked so gay, and what I had heard that was funny. It is
just because I am entirely happy, and because the feeling is still a
surprise. Shall I ever get over it? Am I silly? No!"
Her gladness of heart seemed to make her angelic. She rejoiced in every
joy around her, and grieved for every sorrow. She visited the poor of her
husband's patients, watched with them when there was need, made little
collections for their relief, chatted away their forebodings, half cured
them with her smile. There was something catching, comforting, uplifting
in the spectacle of that overbrimming content.
The well were as susceptible to its influence as the sick. Once, half a
dozen men and twice as many boys were seen engaged in recovering her veil
out of a pond into which the wind had blown it; and when it was handed to
her by a shy youth on the end of a twenty-foot pole, all felt repaid for
their labors by the childlike burst of laughter with which she received
it. Now and then, however, shadows fell across this sunshine. In those
dark moments she frequently reverted to the unhappy couple of whom she had
told Leighton when he first spoke to her of marriage. She was possessed to
describe the man--his dull, filmy, unsympathetic black eyes, his
methodical life and hard rationality, his want of sentiment and
tenderness.
Pages:
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262