She had now, however, something else to do.
She went to her father's room. He was in one of those reveries to which,
as we have said, all the thinking of the extremely aged is reduced, when
the world and its figures of men and women, its strange oscillations and
changes, its passions, pleasures, and pains, seem as made remote by the
intervention of a long space--dim, shadowy, and ghost-like. It is one of
the stages through which the long-living must pass, and, like all the
other experiences of life, it is true only to one's self--it cannot be
communicated by words. "Old memories are spectres that do seem to chase
the soul out of the world,"--an old quotation which may be admitted
without embracing the metaphysical paradox, that "subjective thought is
the poison of life," or conceding the sharp sneer of the cynic--
"Know, ye who for your pleasures gape,
Man's life at best is but a scrape."
But the entry of his daughter brought the old man back to the margin of
real living existences. He held out his hand to her, and smiled in the
face that was dear to him, as if for a moment he rejoiced in the
experience of a feeling which connected him with breathing flesh and
blood. The object of her visit was soon explained. Whispering in his
ear, as if she were afraid of the sound of her own words, she told him
that Walter had promised her a love-token, and that she wished to give
him one in return, for which purpose she desired that she might be
permitted to use one or two old "Spanish ounces" that lay in the old
bureau.
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