Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/276

 would ask, 'Was grandfather like that?' And the dear old soul would draw in her breath and say: 'Oh, he was high! He was ''high! ' '' with an accent of adoration which made one feel that he must have been a beautiful spirit. 'I would have gone anywhere with him,' she always concluded when we talked about him, 'and I would have suffered anything with him gladly, because we were together in a place where nothing in this world could really touch our companionship.

"That is very lovely," I murmured. "That was such a union as one reads about in old romances, and dreams about, when one is young."

"And so," she continued, "when I was first married, I hoped that it might be like that with us. Oliver seemed to me then so strong and self-sufficient, and his personality seemed so various and flexible and so full of color and high spirits and charm. I thought that, when I knew him better, and had been taken into the innermost intimacy, I should find there a still serene place, such as my grandmother had described, with a kind of mysterious joy and rapture at the heart of it, because we should be united in loving together everything that had been almost too lovely and too sacred to speak of to anyone else. That