“Yes,” said my friend, reflectively; “it is strange.  She is not a brilliant woman; she is not even an intellectual one; but there is such a thing as a genius for affection, and she has it.  It has been good for her husband that he married her.”

The words sank into my heart like a great spiritual plummet They dropped down to depths not often stirred.  And from those depths came up some shining sands of truth, worth keeping among treasures; having a phosphorescent light in them, which can shine in dark places, and, making them light as day, reveal their beauty.

“A genius for affection.”  Yes; there is such a thing, and no other genius is so great.  The phrase means something more than a capacity, or even a talent for loving.  That is common to all human beings, more or less.  A man or woman without it would be a monster, such as has probably never been on the earth.  All men and women, whatever be their shortcomings in other directions, have this impulse, this faculty, in a degree.  It takes shape in family ties:  makes clumsy and unfortunate work of them in perhaps two cases out of three,—­wives tormenting husbands, husbands neglecting and humiliating wives, parents maltreating and ruining children, children disobeying and grieving parents, and brothers and sisters quarrelling to the point of proverbial mention; but under all this, in spite of all this, the love is there.  A great trouble or a sudden emergency will bring it out.  In any common danger, hands clasp closely and quarrels are forgotten; over a sick-bed hard ways soften into yearning tenderness; and by a grave, alas! what hot tears fall!  The poor, imperfect love which had let itself be wearied and harassed by the frictions of life, or hindered and warped by a body full of diseased nerves, comes running, too late, with its effort to make up lost opportunities.  It has been all the while alive, but in a sort of trance; little good has come of it, but it is something that it was there.  It is the divine germ of a flower and fruit too precious to mature in the first years after grafting; in other soils, by other waters, when the healing of the nations is fulfilled, we shall see its perfection.  Oh! what atonement will be there!  What allowances we shall make for each other, then! with what love we shall love!

But the souls who have what my friend meant by a “genius for affection” are in another atmosphere than that which common men breathe.  Their “upper air” is clearer, more rarefied than any to which mere intellectual genius can soar.  Because, to this last, always remain higher heights which it cannot grasp, see, nor comprehend.