8
" They had each other. An unusually happy marriage, its selflessness strengthened by shared tragedy, had grown into something more, an identification so close that each could be said to have passed beyond the barriers of self and to live in the other with an immediacy that very largely shut out thought of the future. Largely, not entirely. The thought of death did come at times and they would smile at each other and say, 'We'll go together.' But in each was the fear, never expressed to the other, that it might not be so. They hardly realized the uniqueness of their love, and their good fortune in its possession, though they did know they were happy. "
― Elizabeth Goudge , The Scent of Water
10
" Cousin Mary hoped her journey through periods of dark and light was like that of a Swiss train toiling up the mountainside, in and out of tunnels but always a little farther up the hill at each emergence. But she could only hope that this was so, she did not feel it. It seemed to her that she did not advance at all and that what she was learning now was only to hold on. The Red Queen in Alice Through the Looking Glass, she remembered, had had to run fast merely to stay where she was, but doubtless she had run in hope, disdaining despair; and hope, Cousin Mary discovered, when deliberately opposed to despair, was one of the tough virtues. "
― Elizabeth Goudge , The Scent of Water
