Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/134

 pawed it over. When I was a young girl my heart fairly ached with tenderness for this quality in things—and with a passionate desire to preserve it. When one grows older, the desire doesn't die out; it becomes only intenser, sharper, with years, till it goes through one like pain. And as I was walking over here this morning, I kept thinking of all these things that have it—have the bloom; and of my little Dorothy—who had it, till her own father brushed it off."

Cornelia uttered this speech swiftly and with a kind of soft, eager, glowing sincerity which terribly disquieted my judgment. But I somehow felt that I had slipped into the position of advocate for the rest of Cornelia's family, which stood at the moment in dire need of advocacy. I smothered my instinctive emotional response, and exclaimed:

"Nonsense! What you value in Dorothy can't be brushed off. Bloom is only the transient breath of qualities that extend in her from rind to core, like the red in a blood orange. You are reveling in a mood, or you yourself would recognize that bloom—intactness—is preserved only by unsuccessful, undiscovered, sterile things. If it remains, it becomes a badge of uselessness. It is meant only for a brief seasonal show, which we may