He rose to his full stature with the words, his face kindling, and his head thrown back and upward with the aspiring assertion. Adriana felt the magnetism of his faith and stood up also, and the Professor answered, gently:
“Mr. Van Hoosen, I respect your sentiments with all my intellect and all my heart. One thing in your sturdy creed makes it omnipotent—the utter absence of such an enfeebling thought as that this life was meant to be a pleasure-house. How, indeed, could it fit into your creed? and yet, to make life happy, to have pleasure, is not this the question of existence to a majority?”
“Duty, not pleasure, was John Calvin’s central idea. We are to obey, not to grumble, or to desire. We are to receive all life’s ills as plain facts of discipline:
‘Willing from first to last to take
The mysteries of our life as given;
Leaving the time-worn soul to slake
Its thirst in an undoubted heaven.’”
Then Miss Alida’s entrance broke up the conversation, and the Professor bade them “good-night.” And in some way he made them feel that he had received help and strength, and not merely pleasure, from the interview. The clasp of his hand went to the heart, and both in his eyes and in Peter’s eyes there was that singular 174 brilliance which is the result of seeing, as in a vision, things invisible.
Suddenly every one was weary. Harry went away with the Professor, promising to come early the following evening, which was to be the last of Adriana’s visit. The next day she would return to Woodsome with her father, and her trunks were already packed for the flitting. However, a week or two later Miss Alida was to follow her, and in the interval Adriana looked forward with some pleasure to a life of reflection and rest. She meant to cast up accounts with herself, and see whether she had been a loser, or a gainer, by the winter’s experience.
The next morning both the ladies were silent and weary, and not inclined to movement. They preferred to dawdle over their coffee, to wonder whether Rose was seasick, and to discuss the smaller details of the ceremony, that had been too insignificant for the first prime criticism. Then the newspaper accounts were to praise and to blame, and the morning passed in a languid after-taste of the previous day. In the afternoon the sun was bright and warm and New York in one of her most charming moods. “Let us have a last drive in the Park,” said Miss Alida, “for we shall have to content ourselves with woodland ways and dusty roads for the next few months. Put on your hat and your new suit. We may meet Harry, and if so, we can bring him back with us.”