“For better, or for worse?”
“Perhaps neither one nor yet the other; but, at least, sir, ‘my future will not copy fair my past.’”
“Since my return, I have noticed an alteration in your deportment, which, I regret to say, I cannot consider an improvement; and I should feel inclined to attribute your restless impatience to nervous disease were I not assured by your appearance that you are in perfect health. Remember, that quietude of manner constitutes a woman’s greatest charm; and, unfortunately, you seem almost a mimic mælstrom. But, pardon me, I did not intend to lecture you; and, hoping all things, I will patiently wait for the future that you seem to have dedicated to some special object. I will try to have faith in my perverse little friend, though she sometimes renders it a difficult task. May I trouble you to stamp those letters?”
He could not analyze the change that passed swiftly across her face, nor the emotion that made her suddenly clinch her hands till the rosy nails grew purple.
“Dr. Grey, don’t you believe that if Judas Iscariot had only resisted the temptation of the thirty pieces of silver, and stood by his master instead of betraying him, that his position in heaven would have been far more exalted than that of Peter, or even of John?”
“That is a question which I have never pondered, and am not prepared to discuss. Why do you propound it?”
She did not answer immediately; and, when she spoke, her glittering eyes softened in their expression, and resembled 130 stars rising through the golden mist of lingering sunset splendor.
“God gave you a nobler heart than mine, and left it an easy, pleasant matter for you to be good; while, struggle as I may, I am constantly in danger of tumbling into some slough of iniquity, or setting up false gods for my soul to bow down to. Because it is so much more difficult for me to do right than for you, it is only just that my reward should be correspondingly greater.”
“I am neither John nor Peter, nor are you Judas; and only He who knows our mutual faults and follies, our triumphs and defeats in the life-long campaign with sin, can judge us equitably. I am too painfully conscious of my own imperfections not to sympathize earnestly with the temptations that may assail you; and, moreover, we should never lose sight of the fact,—
|
‘What’s done we partly may compute, But know not what’s resisted.’” |