How is that?"
"Yes, it is so, Elsje. And I see no contradiction in it. Emmy lived in
a dead, false Protestantism, but she was designed for something better.
Lucia lived in the warm, living faith of the Middle Ages, which,
however, we are outgrowing. The Middle Ages knew Jesus and lived in him
fervently, truly and really, as is manifest in their entire nature.
Their inner sensibility of him was much stronger than ours, but their
knowledge, their definite realization of him was much more faulty.
Lucia's piety belongs to an earlier phase - never can it reconcile
itself to ours. She is a perfect blossom on a more ancient branch of
humanity. But she can never be perfectly mated with any who, as we,
belongs to a more modern generation. My love for Emmy was not as deep
and as strong as my love for you, Elsje. Never. It was a much more
superficial, personal sentiment, not encouraged by return, not
sufficiently powerful to stream out further. I never learned to love
mankind through Emmy, as I did through you.
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