She
is a devoted mother, and she wept frankly and unashamedly as she told
me the sad details. Her grief was evidently deep and profound; and yet,
strange to say, I found myself realising that this event, entailing
peculiarly tragic consequences which I need not here define, was to the
gallant old lady, in spite of, or rather in consequence of, her grief,
a thing which heightened the values of existence, put a fire into her
pulses, and quickened the sense of living. It was not that she did not
feel the loss; she suffered acutely; but for all that, it was an
experience of a stirring kind, and her indomitable appetite for
sensation was fed and sustained by it. She was full of schemes for the
widow and children; she was melted with heart-felt grief for them; but
I perceived that she was in no way dejected by the experience; it
called all her powers, even the power of bearing grief, into play; and
the draining of the bitter cup was more congenial to her than inactive
monotony. It gave me a strong sense of her vitality, and I felt that it
was a really splendid thing to be able to approach a grief with this
fiery zest, rather than to collapse into a dreary and hysterical
depression. There were fifty things she could do, and she meant to do
them every one, and secretly exulted in the task. It was even, I felt,
a distinct pleasure to her to describe the melancholy circumstances of
the event in the fullest detail.
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