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Then the conflict began in his own soul, the struggle between that deep conviction of law and right, which was the foundation of his character, and that honest and all-sacrificing love that filled his heart. 'Give me time to think what I am doing, he said. He sat down upon the seat in his old place and bent down, pressing his temples with his hands.
Beneath his outer controlling egotism there were large and generous elements in his mixed nature. And nothing could stand finally against the memory of that sweet all-sacrificing devotion which had been lavished upon himself and his work all the winter! What right had he to accept it? What did it mean? Where was it leading?
No, no; those happy people are strenuously, soberly striving to do the whole of their duty as Christians and British citizens. They are happy because of that. "Oh, my dear friends, do please believe me, that, even apart from God's will and the all-sacrificing love of His Son, there is absolutely no real happiness in this world outside the clean, sweet way of Duty.
"Because," answered Emelie, "the illusion of life is extinguished on the other side of this golden moment, and reality steps forward then in all its heaviness and nakedness. Look at a young couple in the glowing morning of their union, how warm love is then; how it penetrates and beautifies everything; how it glows and speaks in glance and word, and agreeable action; how its glory changes the whole of life into poetry! 'Thou, thou! is the one thought of the young people then. But observe the same couple a few years later 'I, I! and 'my pleasure, is the phrase now. The adoring all-resigning lover is then become the exacting married man, who will be waited on and obeyed. And the loving all-sacrificing bride, she is become the unwieldy and care-burdened housewife, who talks of nothing but trouble, bad saltings, and negligent maid-servants. And what are tête-
Such were the demands of a nature, loyal, impulsive, warmly affectionate, sincere, capable of an all-sacrificing love that could give without return if need be, but a nature which, without love developing in her of itself just for the sake of love, would shrivel, become embittered, and like withered fruit on a tree drop useless to the ground to be trodden under the careless foot of man.
In that strange music was the joy of the innocent, mirthful childhood, blent with the laughter of waves and the call of glad winds. Then it held the wild, wayward dreams of youth, sweet and pure in all their wildness and waywardness. They were followed by a rapture of young love all-surrendering, all-sacrificing love. The music changed.
Adams had postponed the intended wedding of Charles Adams's eldest daughter; and although her mother agreed that it was their duty to forward the orphan children, she certainly felt, as most affectionate mothers whose hearts are not very much enlarged would feel, that much of their own savings much of the produce of her husband's hard labour labour during a series of years when her sister-in-law and her children were enjoying all the luxuries of life would now be expended for their support; this to an all-sacrificing mother, despite her sense of the duty of kindness, was hard to bear.
After all, such marriages had taken place, thousands of them, so why should not his with the beautiful girl be added to the list, the outcome thereof proving the proverbial exception to the inevitable disastrous ending of all such unions? Why did he deny himself? Just because he loved the girl with the same all-sacrificing love his white mother had given his Arabian father.
"Tell me, now, Giurgenow, how is it with your court of Petersburg? Is it formal, as ceremonious as here in Prussia?" Giurgenow laughed aloud. "Our Empress Elizabeth is an angel of beauty and goodness mild and magnanimous to all-sacrificing herself constantly to the good of others. Last year she gave a ball to her body-guard.
Whatever disillusionments may come about other women later in life, the mother ideal thus established remains a constant part of man's unconscious motivations. It is perhaps possible that this infantile picture of a being all-wise, all-tender, all-sacrificing, has within it enough emotional force to create the demand for a mother-goddess in any religion.
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