"Perhaps my ideal of a clean-swept,
austere little cottage, and a few books, and a few friends, and sunrises
and sunsets--isn't life! It's all a tangle and a struggle, ingratitude
and poverty and dispute all mixed in with love and joy and growth, and
every one of us has to take his share! I have one sort of trouble to
bear, and Mother another, and Jim, I suppose, a third; we can't choose
them for ourselves any more than we could choose the colour of our eyes!
But loving each other--loving each other, as I love Anna, makes
everything easy; it's the cure for it all--it makes everything easier to
bear!" And in a whisper, with a new appreciation of their meaning, she
repeated the familiar words, "Love fulfils the law!"
The next evening, just as the autumn twilight was giving way to dusk,
Julia opened the lower green gate of the Tolands' garden in Sausalito,
and went quietly up the steep path. Roses made dim spots of colour here
and there; under the trees it was almost dark, though a soft light still
lingered on the surface of the bay just below. From the drawing-room
windows pale lamplight fell in clear bars across the gravel, but the
hall was unlighted, the door wide open.
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