Olivia unconsciously drew nearer to him, and the words, the voice, dispelled the faint terror that had throbbed through her.
“I don’t know it,” she said, almost piteously. “I seem to know nothing. All my life has been spent half asleep——”
“Ah, don’t regret it!” he said, gravely, with a touch of sadness in his voice. “Your life has been a beautiful dream! May the awakening never come! Don’t speak of it remorsefully! To me it seems so precious——” He paused. “It is a perfect life for one like yourself. Do you see that star?” He stopped, and pointed upward. “Would you drag it from its place and its calm serenity to flicker in an oily lamp? Keep your pure and beautiful life as long as you can! Some day——”
He stopped.
“Some day?” she murmured, gently.
“Some day,” he continued, “the temptation will come to you, the star of my thoughts, to descend and become a part of the hard and cruel world. Stay in the heaven of your present serenity, Miss Vanley!”
It was strange talk in this prosaic, practical nineteenth century; but it did not seem strange or forced to Olivia. She drank in every word, and, if she did not at once feel its meaning, mentally stretched out her hands and sought for it.
Just to keep him talking, to hear the deep, musical voice again, she said:
“Is the world so wicked, then?”
“Wicked and foolish,” he said; “and its folly is worse than its wickedness. I have made one discovery as I passed through it. Do you know what it is?”