So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise.

I should not have minded that, if they would only have left me alone. But they wouldn't leave me alone. They seemed to think the opportunity lost, if they failed to point the conversation at me, every now and then, and stick the point into me.

Dios sabe que nunca hemos de avergonzarnos de nuestras lágrimas, porque son la lluvia que limpia el cegador polvo de la tierra que recubre nuestros corazones endurecidos.

I knew not how to answer, or how to comfort her. That she had done a grievous thing in taking an impressionable child to mould into the form that her wild resentment, spurned affection, and wounded pride, found vengeance in, I knew full well. But that, in shutting out the light of day, she had shut out infinitely more; that, in seclusion, she had secluded herself from a thousand natural and healing influences; that, her mind, brooding solitary, had grown diseased, as all minds do and must and will that reverse the appointed order of their Maker; I knew equally well.

The secret was such an old one now, had so grown into me and become a part of myself, that I could not tear it away.

We changed again, and yet again, and it was now too late and too far to go back, and I went on. And the mists had all solemnly risen now, and the world lay spread before me.