“Yes,” said Mrs. Graves, smiling, “life is like the sea, I think.  When one is a child, it is just a great plain of waters, with little ships sailing on it:  it is pleasant to play by, with breaking waves to wade in, and little treasures thrown up on its rim; then, as one knows more, one realises that it is another world, full of its own urgent life, quite regardless of man, and over which man has no power, except by a little trickery in places.  Man is just a tiresome, far-off incident, his ships like little moving shadows, his nets and lines like small fretful devices.  But the old wise monsters of the depths live their own lives; never seen perhaps, or even suspected, by men.  That’s all very silly and fanciful, of course!  But old and invalided as I am, I seem to be diving deeper and deeper into life, and finding it full of surprises and mysteries and utterly unexpected things.”

“Well,” said Howard, “I am still a child on the shore, picking up shells, fishing in the shallows.  But I have learned something of late, and it is wonderful beyond thought—­so wonderful that I feel sometimes as if I was dreaming, and should wake up to find myself in some other century!”

It did indeed soon dawn upon Howard that there was a change in Maud, that their relations had somehow altered and deepened.  The little barrier of age, for one thing, which he had sometimes felt, seemed obliterated.  There had been in Howard’s mind a sense that he had known a number of hard facts and ugly features about life, had been aware of mean, combative, fierce, cruel elements which were hidden from Maud.  Now this all seemed to be purged away; if these things were there, they were not worth knowing, except to be disregarded.  They were base material knowledge which one must not even recognise; they were not real forces at all, only ugly, stubborn obstacles, through which life must pass, like water flowing among rocks; they were not life, only the channel of life, through which one passed to something more free and generous.  He began to perceive that such things mattered nothing at all to Maud; that her life would have been just as fine in quality if she had lived in the smallest cottage among the most sordid cares.  He saw that she possessed the wisdom which he had missed, because she lived in and for emotion and affection, and that all material things existed only to enshrine and subserve emotion.

Their life seemed to take on a new colour and intensity.  They talked less; up till now it had been a perpetual delight to Howard to elicit Maud’s thoughts and fancies about a thousand things, about books, people, ideas.  Her prejudices, ignorances, enthusiasms half charmed, half amused him.  But now they could sit or walk silent together in an even more tranquil happiness; nearness was enough, and thought seemed to pass between them without need of speech.  Howard began to resume his work; it was enough that Maud should sit by, reading, working, writing.  A glance would pass between them and suffice.