Page:The Painted Veil - Maugham - 1925.djvu/291

Rh others because she is possessed of herself, and I want her to take life like a free man and make a better job of it than I have.”

“Why, my love, you talk as though you were fifty. You’ve got all your life before you. You mustn’t be down-hearted.”

Kitty shook her head and slowly smiled.

“I’m not. I have hope and courage. The past is finished; let the dead bury their dead. It’s all uncertain, life and whatever is to come to me, but I enter upon it with a light and buoyant heart. There’s so much I want to know; I want to read and I want to learn. I see in front of me the glorious fun of the woild, people and music and dancing, and I see its beauty, the sea and the palmtrees, the sunrise and the sunset and the starry night. It’s all confused, but vaguely I discern a pattern, and I see before me an inexhaustible richness, the mystery and the strangeness of everything, compassion and charity, the Way and the Wayfarer, and perhaps in the end—God.”