a young attendant who waited on him at luncheon, an occasion which
revealed to me the full extent of his helplessness.

I gathered from his wife in the course of the afternoon that though his
life was not threatened, yet that there was no doubt that his
helplessness was increasing. He could still hold a book and turn the
pages; but it was improbable that he could do so for long, and he was
amusing himself by inventing a mechanical device for doing this. But
she too talked of the prospect with a quiet tranquillity. She said
that he was making arrangements to direct his business from his house,
as it was becoming difficult for him to enter the office.

He himself showed the same unabated cheerfulness during the whole of my
visit, and spoke of the enjoyment it had brought him. There was not
the slightest touch of self-pity about his talk.

I should have admired and wondered at the fortitude of this gallant
pair, if I had seen signs of repression and self-conquest about them;
if they had relapsed even momentarily into repining, if they had shown
signs of a faithful determination to make the best of a bad business.
But I could discern no trace of such a mood about either of them.
Whether this kindly and sweet patience has been acquired, after hard
and miserable wrestlings with despair and wretchedness, I cannot say,
but I am inclined to think that it is not so. It seems to me rather to
be the display of perfect manliness and womanliness in the presence of
an irreparable calamity, a wonderful and amazing compensation, sent
quietly from the deepest fortress of Love to these simple and generous
natures, who live in each other's lives. I tried to picture to myself
what my own thoughts would be if condemned to this sad condition; I
could only foresee a fretful irritability, a wild anguish, alternating
with a torpid stupefaction. "I seem to love the old books better than
ever," my friend had said, smiling softly, in the course of the
afternoon; "I used to read them hurriedly and greedily in the old days,
but now I have time to think over them--to reflect--I never knew what a
pleasure reflection was." I could not help feeling as he said the
words that with me such a stroke as he had suffered would have dashed
the life, the colour, out of books, and left them faded and withered
husks. Half the charm of books, I have always thought, is the
inter-play of the commentary of life and experience. I ventured to ask
him if thi