It is the
quality we touch--it may be but for a moment--not the quantity we
have, that counts. "All I could never be, all that was lost in me
is yet there--in His hand who planned the perfect whole." That was
what Browning saw vividly when he wrote his Rabbi Ben Ezra. You
have lost a great joy. But in the deepening and strengthening the
love you two have for each other you have gained what is rarer and
better; it is well worth the pain and grief--the grief you have
borne in common--and you will rise stronger and freer.
We all of us are parting from youth, and the horizon is narrowing,
but I do not feel any loss that is not compensated by gain, and I
do not think that you do either. Anything that detaches one, that
makes one turn from the past and look simply at what one has to
do, brings with it new strength and new intensity of interest. I
have no fear for you when I see what is absolutely and
unmistakably good and noble obliterating every other thought as I
saw it this afternoon. I went away with strengthened faith in what
human nature was capable of.
May all that is highest and best lie before you both.
Your affec. friend,
R. B. HALDANE.
I was gradually recovering my health when on May the 21st, 1895,
after an agonising night, Sir John Williams and Henry came into my
bedroom between five and six in the morning and I was told that I
should have to lie on my back till August, as I was suffering from
phlebitis; but I was too unhappy and disappointed to mind.
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