Page:Later Life (1919).djvu/201

hearts were sensitive only a little way beyond themselves, not farther than the narrow circle of their children and perhaps their children's children . . . She did not know why, but, in the vague sadness of this new, softer mood, she thought of Brauws. And, though not able at once to explain why, she connected her thought of him with this kindlier feeling of hers, this deeper, truer vision of things around her. And, as though new, far-stretching vistas opened up before her, she suddenly seemed to be contemplating life, that life which she had never yet contemplated. A new, distant horizon lay open before her, a distant circle, a wide circle round the narrow little circle past which the eyes of her soul had never yet been able to gaze . . . It was strange to her, this feeling, here in this room, in this family-circle. It was as though she suddenly saw all her relations—the Ruyvenaers had now arrived as well—sitting and talking in that room, all her relations and herself also, as very small people, who sat and talked, who moved and lived and thought in a very narrow little circle of self-interest, while outside that circle the horizon extended ever wider and wider, like a vision of great cloudy skies, under which towns rose sharply, seas billowed, bright lightning glanced. It all shot through her and in front of her very swiftly: two or three little revealing flashes, no more; swift revelations, which flashed out and then darkened again. But, swiftly though those revela-