"Then I suppose you call all men not engaged in manual labor, dawdlers,—scholars, poets, men of leisure, who can devote their lives to work that requires patience and fineness of detail, rather than the heavy swing of a blacksmith's hammer. When a man has no need of work"—and Fred paused, a trifle out of temper.
"I do not believe God ever made an idler," she said, with high gravity that widened the gulf between them. "To whom much is given, much will be required."
How unreasonable she was! He hated women who flung texts or proverbs at you; and yet he did not hate her. She had a girl's flighty notions, born of crude contact with inferior minds, and perhaps over-much novel-reading.
"I do not exactly understand what a man must do to win your love," he said in one of those calm, intensely irritating tones. "I have chosen what suited me best,—culture, refinement, and the education that fits me for the sphere in which I am likely to move all my days," impressively. "It is true, much of the wisdom of the world is little to my taste. I do not know why a man should wade through a slough of evil for the sake of repenting afterward, for looking white in contrast to that foul blackness. The ninety and nine just ones seem to me the better example."
"I am afraid I shall not be able to make you understand," she went on, with a little hesitation. "Perhaps I have not the power or patience to shape a man's soul to a noble purpose or ambition. I want him strong and earnest, full of energy and that high sense of duty to all around him, not satisfied to drift down the stream in frivolous content, but to make the way better for his having gone over it. I want him true as steel to his friends, generous, yet uncompromising to his foes, to all evil; the kind of man who, if crushed down by fate to-day, could see some ray above his head to-morrow, who has sufficient moral fibre not to be rigidly bound by class feelings and narrow prejudices."
Sylvie paused, startled at herself. She had never framed her hero in words before, and that she should do it for this man!
"These are the heroes of our youth, Miss Sylvie, and you are very young," in that insufferably patronizing tone.
"I am old enough to know what I want," she retorted, all the fiery blood in her pulses leaping to the charge. "I think, too, I can discern between the true worker, and him who is content with the frivolous outside show."
"Perhaps not. You have been advising me, now allow me a like privilege. Do not imagine me actuated by jealousy,—that vice of the Moor is not in my nature. I have seen with some surprise that your fancies were for those beneath you in the social scale. A woman always loses in this dangerous experiment. She seldom raises her commonplace hero to a level with the gods, and is much more likely to be dragged down."
She turned suddenly, her face flaming scarlet. The indignation misled him. He took it as a sign of personal anger, and wondered if she could, if she dared, throw him over for that coarse, stupid, blundering fellow.