It is the hardest work the imagination has to do--this realizing that one who has lived by us will never more be with us.

It is hard to project a future for ourselves, into which one who has filled a large share of our thought and affection shall never come.

And so there lingers a blind hope, a hopeless hope of something that shall make unreal that which our impotent imaginations refuse to accept as real.

It is a means by which nature parries a sudden blow.
Charlton walked up and down the shore, and wished he might take the drag-line into his own hands; but the mistaken kindness of our friends refuses us permission to do for our own dead, when doing anything would be a relief, and when doing for the dead would be the best possible utterance to the hopeless love which we call grief.
Mrs.Plausaby, weak and vain though she was, was full of natural affection.

Her love for Albert was checked a little by her feeling that there was no perfect sympathy between him and her.