The Choir Invisible

He could not reply at once; and she let him sit in silence, looking across

the garden while she took up her knitting from the end of the bench, and

leaning lightly toward him, measured a few rows of stitches across his

wrist. It gave way under her touch.

"These are your mittens for next winter," she said softly, more softly than

he had ever heard her speak. And the quieting melody of her mere tone!--how

unlike that other voice which bored joyously into you as a bright gimlet

twists its unfeeling head into wood. He turned on her one quick, beautiful

look of gratitude.

"What was it about the harvest?" she repeated, forbearing to return his

look, and thinking that all his embarrassment followed from the pain of

having thus met Amy.

He began to speak very slowly:

"The last time I was here I boasted that I had yet to meet my first great

defeat in life . . . that there was nothing stronger in the world than a

man's will and purpose . . . that if ideals got shattered, we shattered them

. . . that I would go on doing with my life as I had planned, be what I

wished, have what I wanted."

"Well?" she urged, busy with her needles.

"I know better now."

"Aren't you the better for knowing better?"

He made no reply; so that she began to say very simply and as a matter of

course:

"It's the defeat more than anything else that hurts you! Defeat is always

the hardest thing for you to stand, even in trifles. But don't you know that

we have to be defeated in order to succeed? Most of us spend half our lives

in fighting for things that would only destroy us if we got them. A man who

has never been defeated is usually a man who has been ruined. And, of

course," she added with light raillery, "of course there are things stronger

than the strongest will and purpose: the sum of other men's wills and

purposes, for instance. A single soldier may have all the will and purpose

to whip an army, but he doesn't do it. And a man may have all the will and

purpose to whip the world, walk over it rough-shod, shoulder it out of his

way as you'd like to do, but he doesn't do it. And of course we do not

shatter our ideals ourselves--always: a thousand things outside ourselves do

that for us. And what reason had you to say that you would have what you

wanted? Your wishes are not infallible. Suppose you craved the forbidden?"