said Howard. "I know that you would hear me with
patience, and might perhaps advise me if anyone could; but it isn't
that. I have got myself into a strange difficulty; and what I need is
not clearness, but simply courage to face what I know and perceive. My
great lack hitherto is that I have gone through things without feeling
them, like a swallow dipping in a lake; now I have got to sink and
drown. No," he added, smiling, "not to drown, I hope, but to find a new
life in the ruins of the old. I have been on the wrong tack; I have
always had what I liked, and done what I liked; and now when I am
confronted with things which I do not like at all, I have just got to
endure them, and be glad that I have still got the power of suffering
left."

Mrs. Graves looked at him very tenderly. "Yes," she said, "suffering
has a great power, and one doesn't want those whom one loves not to
suffer. It is the condition of loving; but it must be real suffering,
not morbid, self-invented torture. It's a great mistake to suffer more
than one need; one wastes life fast so. I would not intervene to save
you from real suffering, even if I could; but I don't want you to
suffer in an unreal way. I think you are diffident, too easily
discouraged, too courteous, if that is possible--because diffidence,
and discouragement, and even courtesy, are not always unselfish things.
If one renounces anything one has set one's heart upon one must do so
for its own sake, and not only because the disapproval and
disappointment of others makes life uncomfortable. I think that your
life has tended to make you value an atmosphere of diffused
tranquillity too much. If one is sensitive to the censure or the
displeasure of others, it may not be unselfish to give up things rather
than provoke it--it may only be another form of selfishness. Some of
the most unworldly people I know have not overcome the world at all;
they have merely made terms with it, and have found that abnegation is
only more comfortable than conquest. I do not know that you are doing
this, or have done it, but I think it likely. And in any case I think
you trust reason too much, and instinct too little. If one desires a
thing very much, it is often a proof that one needs it. One may not
indeed be able to get it, but to resign it is sometimes to fail in
courage. I can see that you are in some way discontented with your
life. Don't try to mend it by a polite withdrawal. I am going to pay
you a comp