"No."
"Don't you think that he ought to tell her, then?"
Ingram did not speak for a minute. "Perhaps some miracle may come to pass, and he may live," he said then; "you see, he has lived three weeks longer than any man in his circumstances ought to expect to live."
"Oh, then he hasn't got to die soon?"
Ingram knit his brows in the dark. "I can't explain myself clearly," he said; "but it seems to me that he and Alva sort of rise above rules, so to speak. Part of the time she's as she always was—just as we are—and then again I feel as if she herself had gone and left me sitting with just a figure of some sort.—" He paused. "I expect he's the same way," he added, after a second; "it's all beyond me."
"It's strange, isn't it?" Lassie spoke thoughtfully. "She's very sweet and lovely, and dear with it all. But I know just what you mean; I've seen it, too. She is talking, and then she stops and that white look comes over her face, and I never speak then until she does. Do you know," she said, almost timidly, "I keep thinking of things I've read in books about the Middle Ages,—about saints; about 'ecstasy,' they called it. We say 'ecstasies' about hats, or little dogs, or the flowers at Easter; but when Alva has been talking about her life in that house and stops to think, and I see her face, I feel as if I understood what the word really and truly meant."
"I suppose there's no danger of her converting you," said Ingram; "it's all very well for her, but I should hate to have you that way."
"Why?" asked the girl, in surprise.
"It isn't human, that's why," the man declared, energetically. "We're past the Middle Ages," he added, with a little laugh, "far past now."
"You think that people can be too good?"