Page:The Portrait of a Lady (London, Macmillan & Co., 1881) Volume 2.djvu/202

 I don't mind them; I only care for one thing—your thinking it's all right. I don't care what others think. I have never cared much, and why should I begin to-day, when I have taken to myself a compensation for everything? I won't pretend that I am sorry you are rich; I am delighted. I delight in everything that is yours—whether it be money or virtue. Money is a great advantage. It seems to me, however, that I have sufficiently proved that I can get on without it; I never in my life tried to earn a penny, and I ought to be less subject to suspicion than most people. I suppose it is their business to suspect—that of your own family; it's proper on the whole they should. They will like me better some day; so will you, for that matter. Meanwhile my business is not to bother, but simply to be thankful for life and love. It has made me better, loving you," he said on another occasion; "it has made me wiser, and easier, and brighter. I used to want a great many things before, and to be angry that I didn't have them. Theoretically, I was satisfied, as I once told you. I flattered myself that I had limited my wants. But I was subject to irritation; I used to have morbid, sterile, hateful fits of hunger, of desire. Now I am really satisfied, because I can't think of anything better. It is just as when one has been trying to spell out a book in the twilight, and suddenly the lamp comes in. I had been putting out my eyes over the book of life, and finding nothing to reward me for my pains; but now that I can read it properly I see that it's a delightful story. My dear girl, I can't tell you how life seems to stretch there before us—what a long summer afternoon awaits us. It's the latter half of an Italian day—with a golden haze, and the shadows just lengthening, and that divine delicacy in the light, the air, the landscape, which I have loved all my life, and which you love to-day. Upon my word, I don't see