Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/254

244 think I love you as well as I do brother Jim, Mr. Will."

"No danger of that Ally," I said, laughing. "You told me a long time ago that there was n't any same as brother. If you 'll love me half as well as you do brother Jim I 'll be satisfied."

"I remember the day I told you that," replied Ally. "It is very true," and she left the room.

I do not like even now to recall the memory of the first few weeks after I returned home from that fortnight's dream. The world believes that the keenest suffering and deepest joy are known by the idealistic and imaginative temperament. There seems a manifest absurdity in the attempt to compare the emotions of opposite temperaments. How can either measure the other, and shall one man know both? I dissent, however, from the world's verdict on this point. I believe that the idealist enjoys more but suffers less than the realist. The realist accepts his pain as he accepts other things in life, for what it is—actual present hopeless, irremediable. Face to face with the fact of it, he sits down and sees no escape. In the idealist, hope is always large and strong, and a certain joy in the great significant, solemn, undercurrent of life is never absent from him, even when the waters seem going over his head. I am quite sure that no possible future could have looked to either Jim or Ally so like a pall as my future life did to me during these days. Nothing but a strong physique, a