The Choir Invisible

The tears lay mute on her eyes. She rose quickly and walked away to the

garden. He followed her. When they had entered it, he strolled beside her

among the plants.

"You must see them once more," she said. Her tone was perfectly quiet and

careless. Then she continued with animation:

"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."

They came to the bench where they were used to talk, She sat down, and

waited until she could control the least tremor of her voice. Then she

turned upon him her noble eyes, the exquisite passionate tender light of

which no effort of the will could curtain in. Nor could any self-restraint

turn aside the electrical energy of her words:"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.

"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."