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Show 136 "base and groveling passion that the world calls love." Not at all arrogant in the notion that she is party to the more exalted kind of love, she prays that she may "ever be worthy of it." She is feeling "weak and debilitated" on Sunday, May 14th, and blames the onset of warm weather. Attending a service with Sister Pratt at the Baptist Church in the evening, she finds Reverend Hen-son "a very eloquent speaker and fine delineator of human nature." During their walk home, Ellis is thinking that, as gifted a speaker as the man is, she has heard no one yet who can compare to Milford. As though reading her thoughts, Sister Pratt asks, "Can Brother Shipp speak that well?" Ellis reveals what she has just been thinking about her husband, begging to be excused for any seeming egotism, to which Sister Pratt's rejoinder is, "You are indeed excusable. It is really a pleasure to me, for it is so seldom I see a woman who has such an exalted opinion of her husband as you possess of yours." We have marveled before at Ellis's "exalted opinion" of her husband, setting it against the tenor of our own time; but Sister Pratt's remark hints that it was a unique attitude even then. As Ellis begins the study of the blood's chemistry, she is interested and delighted, wondering how she could ever have thought the study of medicine "dry and obtuse" when each new discovery she makes only reaffirms to her the harmonies in creation and the wonders of a gospel which sees man as creation's ultimate triumph in the light of his eternal nature and unlimited potential. |