Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/285

 individuality. You are piquant and delightful because you are a challenge, a whiff of the wind, a counterblast. You have the 'fighting edge.

Cornelia smiled as if she were recalling something sweet. "I am a little tired just now," she said, "of fighting. There are pleasanter things than that. I want to surrender and repent."

"Repent of what?"

"Oh, of being worldly, you might call it."

"Please postpone that till you are ninety. You mustn't repent yet. Do you know, I used to think scornfully of deathbed repentances, but now I think I was wrong; a deathbed is the place for repentance; and the Catholic Church and the Gospels are right in welcoming those who turn up at the eleventh hour. In fact, I half suspect—if we were put into the world to see what we can make of it, and I don't know any other good reason for our presence here—I half suspect that God Himself admires most those who 'surrender' to Him only with their last breath."

"How perfectly shocking!" exclaimed Cornelia. "What can you mean by such absurdity?"

"By surrendering, I mean throwing yourself on God before you have exhausted every possibility of making sense out of the world for yourself.