"Oh yes, my dear."
"I do think that, if you would make her understand the real truth, she might have me yet. She wouldn't like that a fellow should die."
"I am afraid that she is hard-hearted, Tom."
"I do not believe it, mother. I have seen her when she wouldn't kill even a fly. If she could only be made to see all the good she could do."
"I am afraid she won't care for that unless she can bring herself really to love you."
"Why shouldn't she love me?"
"Ah, my boy; how am I to tell you? Perhaps if you hadn't loved her so well it might have been different. If you had scorned her—"
"Scorn her! I couldn't scorn her. I have heard of that kind of thing before, but how is one to help oneself? You can't scorn a friend just because you choose to say so to yourself. When I see her she is something so precious to me that I could not be rough to her to save my life. When she first came it wasn't so. I could laugh at her then. But now—! They talk about goddesses, but I am sure she is a goddess to me."
"If you had made no more than a woman of her it might have been better, Tom." All that was too late now. The doctrine which Lady Tringle was enunciating to her son, and which he repudiated, is one that has been often preached and never practised. A man when he is conscious of the presence of a mere woman, to whom he feels that no worship is due, may for his own purpose be able to tell a lie to her, and make her believe that he acknowledges a divinity in her presence. But, when he feels the goddess, he cannot carry himself before her as though she were a mere woman, and, as such, inferior to himself in her attributes. Poor Tom had felt the touch of something divine, and had fallen immediately prostrate before the shrine with his face to the ground. His chance with Ayala could in no circumstances have been great; but she was certainly not one to have yielded to a prostrate worshipper.
"Mother!" said Tom, recalling Lady Tringle as she was leaving the room.