Yet still even
in such genuine sympathy, there was a certain imaginative effort to be
made. The gulf between the generations, however hidden for the moment,
was always there.
Yet, after all, James and Mary Mesurier possessed an incorruptible
treasure, which their children had neither given nor could take away. To
regard them as without future would be a shallow observation,--for love
has always a future, however old in mortal years it may have grown; and
as they grew older, their love seemed to grow stronger. Involuntarily
they seemed to draw closer together, as by an instinct of
self-preservation. Their love had been before their children; were they
to be spared, it would still be the same love, sweeter by trial, when
their children had passed from them. In this love had been wise for
them. Some parents love their children so unwisely that they forget to
love each other; and, when the children forsake them, are left
disconsolate. One has heard young mothers say that now their boy has
come, their husbands may take a second place; and often of late we have
heard the woman say: "Give me but the child, and the lover can go his
ways.
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