But not all know how
kind she is, how merciful and how sweet. For she does not heal broken
hearts. She takes them as they are into her own, with all the memory and
all the sin, perhaps, and all the bitter sorrow which is the reward of
faith and faithlessness alike. She takes them all, and holds them kindly
in her own breast, as she has taken the torn limbs of martyred saints
and tortured sinners and has softly turned them all into a fragrant
dust. And though the ashes of the heart be very bitter, they are after
all but dust, which cannot feel of itself any more. Yet there may be
something left behind, in the place where it lived and was broken and
died, which is not wholly bad, though there be little good in this
earth where there is no heart.
Moreover, nature is a silent mistress to all but those who love her, and
she tells no tales as men and women do, and forgets none of the secrets
which are told to her, for they are our treasures--treasures of love and
of hate, of sweetness and of poison, which we lay up in her keeping when
we are alone with her, sure that we shall find again all we have given
up if we require it of her.
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