9/18 He couldn't give it to her, my dear. I tell you I have lived to a great age, and I have known great people, and I have never seen the man yet who could give a woman all the love she wanted. Women seem to be born with a kind of divination--a second sight where love is concerned--they aren't content with the mere husk, and yet that is all that the most of them ever get--" "But my father ?" protested Laura; "he broke his heart for her." A smile at the fine ironic humour of existence crossed the old man's sunken lips. "He gave to her dead what she had never had from him living," he returned. |