That night his aunt asked him about his book, and he said he was not getting on well with it.  She asked why, and he said that he had been feeling that it was altogether too intellectual a conception; that he had approached it from the side of reason, as if people argued themselves into faith, and had treated religion as a thesis which could be successfully defended; whereas the vital part of it all, he now thought, was an instinct, perhaps refined by inherited thought, but in its practical manifestations a kind of choice, determined by a natural liking for what was attractive, and a dislike of what was morally ugly.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Graves, “that is true, I am sure.  But it can be analysed for all that, though I agree with you that no amount of analysis will make one act rightly.  But I believe,” she went on, “that clearness of view helps one, though not perhaps at the time.  It is a great thing to see what motives are merely conventional and convenient, and to find out what one really regards as principles.  To look a conventional motive in the face deprives it of its power; and one can gradually disencumber oneself of all sorts of complicated impulses, which have their roots in no emotion.  It is only the motives which are rooted in emotion that are vital.”

Then, after a pause, she said, “Of course I have seen of late that you have been dissatisfied with something.  I have not liked to ask you about it; but if it would help you to talk about it, I hope you will.  It is wonderful how talking about things makes one’s mind clear.  It isn’t anything that others say or advise that helps one, yet one gains in clearness.  But you must do as you like about this, Howard.  I don’t want to press you in any way.”

“Thank you very much,” said Howard.  “I know that you would hear me with patience, and might perhaps advise me if anyone could; but it isn’t that.  I have got myself into a strange difficulty; and what I need is not clearness, but simply courage to face what I know and perceive.  My great lack hitherto is that I have gone through things without feeling them, like a swallow dipping in a lake; now I have got to sink and drown.  No,” he added, smiling, “not to drown, I hope, but to find a new life in the ruins of the old.  I have been on the wrong tack; I have always had what I liked, and done what I liked; and now when I am confronted with things which I do not like at all, I have just got to endure them, and be glad that I have still got the power of suffering left.”

Mrs. Graves looked at him very tenderly.  “Yes,” she said, “suffering has a great power, and one doesn’t want those whom one loves not to suffer.  It is the condition of loving; but it must be real suffering, not morbid, self-invented torture.  It’s a great mistake to suffer more than one need; one wastes life fast so.  I would not intervene to save you from real suffering, even if I could; but I don’t want you to suffer in an unreal way.  I think you are diffident,