human
You must see them once more, she said. Her tone was perfectly quiet and careless. Then she continued with animation:
gpt
Some day you will not know this garden. When we are richer, you will see what I shall do: with it, with the house, with everything! I do not live altogether on memories: I have hopes.
human
I thought I should not let you go away without saying something more to you about what has happened lately with Amy. My interest in you, your future, your success, has caused me to feel everything more than you can possibly realize. But I am not thinking of this now: it is nothing, it will pass. What it has caused me to see and to regret more than anything else is the power that life will have to hurt you on account of the ideals that you have built up in secret. We have been talking about Sir Thomas Malory and chivalry and ideals: there is one thing you need to know--all of us need to know it--and to know it well. Ideals are of two kinds. There are those that correspond to our highest sense of perfection. They express what we might be were life, the world, ourselves, all different, all better. Let these be high as they may! They are not useless because unattainable. Life is not a failure because they are never attained. God Himself requires of us the unattainable: 'Be ye perfect, even as I am perfect! He could not do less. He commands perfection, He forgives us that we are not perfect! Nor does He count us failures because we have to be forgiven. Our ideals also demand of us perfection--the impossible; but because we come far short of this we have no right to count ourselves as failures. What are they like--ideals such as these? They are like light-houses. But light-houses are not made to live in; neither can we live in such ideals. I suppose they are meant to shine on us from afar, when the sea of our life is dark and stormy, perhaps to remind us of a haven of hope, as we drift or sink in shipwreck. All of your ideals are lighthouses.
gpt
But there are ideals of another sort; it is these that you lack. As we advance into life, out of larger experience of the world and of ourselves, are unfolded the ideals of what will be possible to us if we make the best use of the world and of ourselves, taken as we are. Let these be as high as they may, they will always be lower than those others which are perhaps the veiled intimations of our immortality. These will always be imperfect; but life is not a failure because they are so. It is these that are to burn for us, not like light-houses in the distance, but like candles in our hands. For so many of us they are too much like candles!--the longer they burn, the lower they burn, until before death they go out altogether! But I know that it will not be thus with you. At first you will have disappoint-ments and sufferings--the world on one side, unattainable ideals of perfection on the other. But by degrees the comforting light of what you may actually do and be in an imperfect world will shine close to you and all around you, more and more. It is this that will lead you never to perfection, but always toward it.
human
I shall always think of you for your last words to me, he said in a thick voice, rising.
gpt
Some day you will find the woman who will be a candle,
human
Oh, if you ever marry, don't make the mistake of treating the woman as an ideal Treat her in every way as a human being exactly like yourself! With the same weakness, the same strug-les, the same temptations! And as you have some mercy on yourself despite your faults, have some mercy on her despite hers.
gpt
Must I ever think of you as having been weak and tempted as I have been? he cried, the guilty blood rushing into his face in the old struggle to tell her everything.
human
Oh, as for me--what do you know of me! she cried, laughing. And then more quickly:
gpt
I have read your face! What do you read in mine? He looked long into it:
human
All that I have most wished to see in the face of any woman--except one thing!
gpt
What is that? But don't tell me!
human
Always be a good man,
gpt
Come back!
human
Take off your hat!
gpt
Go now, dear friend!