How foolish it is to try and cure by argument what time will cure so completely and so gently if left to itself.  As I get older, the anxiety to prove myself right if I quarrel dies out.  I hold my tongue and time vindicates me, if it is possible to vindicate me, or convicts me if I am wrong.  Many and many a debate too which I have had with myself alone has been settled in the same way.  The question has been put aside and has lost its importance.  The ancient Church thought, and seriously enough, no doubt, that all the vital interests of humanity were bound up with the controversies upon the Divine nature; but the centuries have rolled on, and who cares for those controversies now.  The problems of death and immortality once upon a time haunted me so that I could hardly sleep for thinking about them.  I cannot tell how, but so it is, that at the present moment, when I am years nearer the end, they trouble me but very little.  If I could but bury and let rot things which torment me and come to no settlement—­if I could always do this—­what a blessing it would be.

CHAPTER IX—­HOLIDAYS

I have said that Ellen had a child by her first husband.  Marie, for that was her name, was now ten years old.  She was like neither her mother nor father, and yet was shot as it were with strange gleams which reminded me of her paternal grandmother for a moment, and then disappeared.  She had rather coarse dark hair, small black eyes, round face, and features somewhat blunt or blurred, the nose in particular being so.  She had a tendency to be stout.  For books she did not care, and it was with the greatest difficulty we taught her to read.  She was not orderly or careful about her person, and in this respect was a sore disappointment—­not that she was positively careless, but she took no pride in dress, nor in keeping her room and her wardrobe neat.  She was fond of bright colours, which was another trial to Ellen, who disliked any approach to gaudiness.  She was not by any means a fool, and she had a peculiarly swift mode of expressing herself upon persons and things.  A stranger looking at her would perhaps have adjudged her inclined to sensuousness, and dull.  She was neither one nor the other.  She ate little, although she was fond of sweets.  Her rather heavy face, with no clearly cut outline in it, was not the typical face for passion; but she was capable of passion to an extraordinary degree, and what is more remarkable, it was not explosive passion, or rather it was not passion which she suffered to explode.  I remember once when she was a little mite she was asked out somewhere to tea.  She was dressed and ready, but it began to rain fast, and she was told she could not go.  She besought, but it was in vain.  We could not afford cabs, and there was no omnibus.  Marie, finding all her entreaties were useless, quietly walked out of the room; and after some little time her mother, calling her and