"Well?"
"They are poor and lowly. Miss Cameron is young, and not unattractive."
"I understand you. My motives are open to suspicion."
"Is it not natural?"
"Quite, and I do not blame you for doubting me, but you must not do Miss Cameron an injustice. She is absolutely blameless. I have related the simple truth, and were you acquainted with my story—which I do not consider myself free to disclose—your doubts would vanish. Can you not credit me with a sincere desire to serve two poor and deserving persons without harboring a base thought towards them?"
As my sad voice had won Miss Cameron's confidence, so it now won the confidence of the good doctor.
"It is a censorious world," he said, "and I spoke out of its mouth. Forgive me."
Miss Cameron must have been keeping watch for us, for my soft tap on the street door was almost immediately answered. Standing in the passage, her hand shading the candle from the night air, she seemed to hesitate whether to invite me in, and I, divining—which was the case—that she and her mother occupied but one room, resolved the difficulty by saying, "I will see you bye and bye, doctor," and pulling the street door to.
Left alone in the dark street, I fell to musing upon the events of the last twenty-four hours. I could scarcely see a dozen yards before me, and even at that distance a moving form would have presented the semblance of a shadow created by the spreading fog; not a sound but that of my own footsteps disturbed the stillness of the dreary scene. And yet, dismal as were my surroundings, I was conscious that my spirits had assumed a more healthy tone. I was devoutly grateful for the change that had come over me, and I did not stop to consider whether it was due to chance or to a merciful interposition of Providence at the most critical period in my life. A heavy weight was lifted from my heart. I had been saved by a woman's face, a woman's voice; she had set free the sealed springs of sympathy and pity—I once was more human.
Do not misunderstand me. The brief interview with Miss Cameron, the few words we had exchanged, had not inspired me with love for her—that was in the future, and to be reared upon a more reasonable foundation; but it had revealed to me that there was still some worthy work for me to do, that having sinned through self-indulgence in a vice I abhorred, and having contemplated a deed the thought of which now sent a shudder through me, I might work out my redemption by simple acts of kindness to beings even more forlorn than myself.