Page:Margaret Sherwood--A Puritan in Bohemia.djvu/186

178 "Isn't it a chance to learn to enter other people's lives?" asked Mrs. Kent. "One's joy and one's sorrow come to make one understand."

"How can one understand other people's lives," demanded Anne, "when it is so hard to make the least sense out of one's own?"

"Oh dear!" groaned Helen, "you are all saying just the opposite of what you said at first. Don't you remember?"

They did remember, and they laughed.

"All this confirms Mrs. Kent's idea that opinions are not of much account," said Anne. "Miserere is the only one who has been true to his philosophy." She stroked the cat lying in her lap. "He has the only kind of philosophy one can be true to."

"We have changed our points of view," said Mrs. Kent meditatively. "That, is because we have faced certain experiences. Life always outstrips opinion. We learn the secret bit by bit, and not by thinking only. Every vivid experience is like