It begins with the
"ancient comradeship, loyal and unbroken" in which they had "first
seen life together."

Shining nights, tumultuous days,
Joy swift caught in sudden ways,
All the laughter, love and praise,
All the joys of living

These we shared together dear,
Plot and jest and story,
This is hid, shut off, unknown,
Seeing that to you alone
Is the wondrous Kingdom shown
And the power and Glory!

Annie's thoughts, then, and Cecil's were not greatly on the elder
brother, who was pursuing his own romance with a heart that seems to
have been fairly adequate in its energies.

Most mothers have watched their sons through one or more experiences
of calf love: Gilbert indicates in the _Autobiography_--and I knew
it, too, from some jokes he and Frances used to make--that he had had
one or two fancies before the coming of Reality. He must then
convince his mother that Reality had come: he must overcome a
prejudice avowed by neither: he must call on the deeps of a mother's
feelings so effectively that it would never now be avowed, that it
might indeed be swept away.

And so, sitting at a table in a seaside lodging, as his mother sat in
the same room or moved about making cocoa for the family, Gilbert
tried to express what even for him was the inexpressible.

1 Rosebery Villas
Granville Road
Felixstowe.

MY DEAREST MOTHER,

You may possibly think this a somewhat eccentric proceeding. You
are sitting opposite and talking--about Mrs. Berline. But I take this
method of addressing you because it occurs to me that you might
possibly wish to turn the matter over in your mind before writing or
speaking to me about it.

I am going to tell you the whole of a situation in which I believe
I have acted rightly, though I am not absolutely certain, and to ask
for your advice on it. It was a somewhat complicated one, and I
repeat that I do not think I could rightly have acted otherwise, but
if I were the greatest fool in the three kingdoms and had made
nothing but a mess of it, there is one person I should always turn to
and trust. Mothers know more of their son's idiocies than other
people can, and this has been peculiarly true in your case. I have
always rejoiced at this, and not been ashamed of it: this has always
been true and always will be. These things are easier written than
said, but you know it is true, don't you?

I am i