Excerpted Inspirations #162Linda Odhner, with photos by Liz KufsJan 20, 20250 min readUpdated: Feb 10, 2025
![[Nadine Eliot reflects on the rededication to her marriage she made after falling in love with another man who is cousin to her children.]
But then George, dear old thing, was such a creature of habit that, having once believed her beautiful, nothing that could happen to her looks would be likely to alter his belief. Nor his love. Her old George was now sixty-two and had never, since the day he married her, looked at another woman with any emotion stronger than a tepid acknowledgement of the creature’s existence. How unhappy they had been once! And now so happy!
Yes, she was a happy woman. With a shock she realised that until now she had not acknowledged that to herself. Under this very tree, some years ago, she had died a sort of death and been born again. She had let her passion for David fall into dust with the failing breath and dedicated herself to love life as it was held within the walls of her home. “The lover of life sees the flame in our dust and a gift in our breath.” But she had not seen it. It had pleased her to walk through her days for a long time with a serene melancholy, wearing her martyr’s crown of lilies and roses with an exquisite sad grace that suited her dark pale beauty to perfection, or she would not have worn it so. It had in truth been a martyr’s crown for a while, for it had been a real death that she had died, but she had admired herself for her self-denial, and had not removed the crown when it had become entirely outmoded.
“And I have always prided myself upon my hats,” she said to herself. “Dear heaven, I am a foolish woman. I acknowledge it and that hat is in the river. But a happy fool! Most happy. [...]”
Elizabeth Goudge, The Heart of the Family (1953), pp. 147-148; quoted poem by George Meredith](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/6feacf_6276e765c84a4118ba4bed9968f50882~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_980,h_1643,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/6feacf_6276e765c84a4118ba4bed9968f50882~mv2.jpg)
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