I have always, God forgive me, believed my
work to be in some way superior to hers. I loved her truly, but
with a certain condescension of mind, as one loves a child or a
flower; and now I see that she has been serenely ahead of me all
the time, and it has been she that has helped me along; I have been
as the spoilt and wilful child, and she as the sweet and wise
mother, who has listened to its prattle, and thrown herself, with
all the infinite patience of love, into the tiny bounded dreams. I
have told her all this as simply as I could, and though she
deprecated it all generously and humbly, I feel the blessed sense
of having caught her up upon the way, of seeing--how dimly and
imperfectly!--what I have owed her all along. I am overwhelmed with
a shame which it is a sweet pleasure to confess to her; and now
that I can spare her a little, anticipate her wishes, save her
trouble, it is an added joy; a service that I can render and which
she loves to receive. I never thought of these things in the old
days; she had always planned everything, arranged everything,
forestalled everything.
I have at last persuaded her to come up to town and see a doctor.
We plan to go abroad for a time.
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