“You do not join in this discussion, Mrs. Burgess. I am quite sure you could give us opinions much wiser than ours.”
Anna’s colour deepened as she answered:—
“I have not read Shelley in a great many years. Indeed, I know nothing of literature.”
There was a little silence; Anna hesitated, half inclined to say a word in explanation of a fact which she plainly saw the two men found very surprising, but finally, finding the explanation too personal and too serious, remained silent.
As she started to walk home from the Everett’s, Professor Ward joined her, asking to walk with her. He was a man of forty, with a wife and a flock of little children. Anna knew the family slightly, but pleasantly.
“Mrs. Burgess,” the professor began, as they walked down the quiet street, “I do not want to intrude or to be found inquisitive, but I am so puzzled by what you said a little while ago that I really wish you felt inclined to enlighten me. I know you never speak with the exaggeration and inaccuracy which is so much the habit of young ladies, and so I accept what you said as to your ignorance of literature as sober truth. But you are a well-educated woman. How can it be?”
Anna was almost glad of a chance to explain. She was facing many new questions in these days, and she felt the need of light. She answered therefore at once, with frankness:—
“I deliberately gave up study on all these lines when I became a Christian. I supposed them to be contrary to the absolute consecration of my life to God.”
Professor Ward looked perplexed.
“You cannot understand,” Anna said timidly. “I have felt since I have been in Fulham as if the language of my religious life in those days would be an unknown tongue here. I see that I am right. To you, Professor Ward, I am sure such a sense of duty as I speak of is unintelligible, but I can still say it was sincere. And it was not an easy sacrifice to make, for I had already grown fond of poetry, and longed to know more in a way I could never express.”