Awakening by Maud Diver

"Weak souls are apt to lose themselves in others; whereas it is in others that the strong soul discovers itself. " -- MAETERLINCK.

It was Christmas Eve. The empty rooms and silent passages of Bramleigh Beeches were alive with footsteps and voices and the high clear music of children's laughter. All the pulses of the staid old house seemed athrob with the immemorial spirit of the day: that child-spirit of loving and giving that shines, like a star fallen on a dust-heap, through all the cynical indifference and vulgarization of our sophisticated age, even as it shone in the Bethlehem Manger near two thousand years ago. Lilamani's eager interest in all that concerned this "Great Birthday and festival of children-worship" made her husband the more desirous to show her the traditional English Christmas at its best. Hence his readiness to invite Clara, that the child element might be supreme; as indeed it had been ever since the coming of the "contingent. " Rather more so than Nevil cared about. But he had said little, and devoted himself strenuously to his first big, complex picture -- the meeting between Rāma and Sita in the hour of victory.