Page:Twilight of the Souls (1917).djvu/89

Rh She turned pale. They wanted to live, not merely to exist! Was it for her to blame them, for her, who herself, very late, when she was quite old—too late and too old—had felt the need to live and not merely to exist? But. . . had they really found their life in what they now considered their life? Did she not now know that the real life is not for one's self, but for others? Did she not know it even though she had never reached the radiant cities of the new life which had shone far off on those unattainable horizons? Had she not guessed that it was there; and had she herself not seemed very small when she had had to leave out of her reckoning the man who had become so dear to her that she was able to forget everything for his sake, even her son, the comfort of her existence, if not of her life? Was not she herself small and had she the right to condemn, merely because she was older and therefore saw the purest truths gleam at times out of some shimmering mist of self-deception? No, she did not condemn. . . but that did not prevent her from being shocked. She could understand now. . . and yet the rooted prejudice was there. She was willing to accept their new, fresh, free happiness in a life without conventional bonds; and yet those bonds bound herself, despite her new powers of understanding. She understood; and yet she felt a shudder at those who did not tread the beaten path, the smooth track of their