ve you your father for a warning.
What you are doing is against God's will. Your hot tears bear witness
against you."

"Uncle Sperber," she said gravely, "that is just the reason why words
are unnecessary. My tears must say to you, 'I know everything, I
understand everything, and yet I cannot let him go.'"

"Then God be with you, my child! If it is so that you know what you are
doing, then go the way that you are destined to go. I see nothing good
before you. Exactly so I spoke to your mother--the very same words. She
married the man she loved for no other reason, as it seems to me now,
than that you should come to be what you are at this moment. You wanted
to come to life. And now ... others are wanting to come to life, and
seem, worse luck, to need you and this chance stranger.

"Child, if love only lasted! A marriage for love like that is a
serious thing for anybody. If it were only for a short time, it
wouldn't be so bad. But to choose a partner for life in the glare of a
Bengal light! It would be the same for me to buy my cows by Bengal
light, or when I was drunk. If you'd only listen to me! Let him go,
Tubby, let him go, I've said; take our nephew. I can't do better by
you."

Then the girl raised herself to her full height: "That's enough, Uncle
Sperber," she said with shining eyes, as she gave him her hand. "You
are very good to me! But if in the morning he still wants me, I stand
by it. I am so full of force and courage and joy because he loves me. I
am strong anyhow--I will work out whatever fate lays upon me. I know
that every happiness must be paid for in suffering."

"Well," said old Sperber, "if you go to your folly with courage and
joy, it's one thing--but with burning tears ...? Am I not right, my
girl? If you have courage, you may get the best of this devil of a
fellow--but going to it in sorrow ... no!"

And so they came together, as thousands and thousands of others have
done, driven by love, in the face of all reason. The history of their
marriage was the history of many another that reaches from youth to old
age. They made each other happy and disappointed each other, they did
good and evil to each other, they bored each other and grew accustomed
to each other. As with all mortals, there were long stretches of life
over which dulness lay like a covering of thickly-matted seaweed. Under
this covering the waves of life could hardly move, could not break
through to the light of day; only a mighty