Page:Margaret Sherwood--A Puritan in Bohemia.djvu/129

A Puritan Bohemia haunted me, and the fear that love would slip away walked with me. Life was more bitter and life was more sweet because of love, and it was harder still to understand.

"I was married just three years. They were years of great joy and great pain. I used to say that I was in the corner of paradise that was hard by hell. Then a day came when they told me that my little child was dead. His father died next day.

"It was a bitter lesson. I am only now beginning to see that when one is too happy, or too unhappy, or both, to care about other people, God finds a way to make one care. Perhaps, if one learns only half of one's lesson in the morning, one is always set to learn the other half in the afternoon."

They left the Museum in silence. Outside, the frosty dust, blown high into the air, was turning gold-colour in the light of the sun. The one Florentine spire of the city stood gray against the sky. Through its delicate traceries shone the yellow of the west.