I looked about for my hat to take my leave, when a sudden thought struck me. “I will stay. I will sit down beside this old creature, and, for once at least in her miserable life, she shall hear from the lips of a man a language that is not that of the debauchee. Who knows what effect one honest word of a true-hearted man may not work? I will try, at all events,” said I, and approached her. She did not, as I expected, make room for me on the sofa beside her, and I was, therefore, obliged to take a chair in front. This was so far awkward that it looked formal; it gave somewhat the character of accusation to my position, and I decided to obviate the difficulty by assuming a light, easy, cheerful manner at first, as though I suspected nothing.
“It's a pleasant little capital, this Kalbbratonstadt,” said I, as I lay back in my chair.
“Is it?” said she, dryly, without looking up from her work.
“Well, I mean,” said I, “it seems to have its reasonable share of resources. They have their theatre, and their music garden, and their promenades, and their drives to—to—”
“You'll find all the names set down there,” said she, handing me a copy of Murray's “Handbook” that lay beside her.
“I care less for names than facts, madam,” said I, angrily, for her retort had stung me, and routed all my previous intention of a smooth approach to the fortress. “I am one of those unfashionable people who never think the better of vice because it wears French gloves, and goes perfumed with Ess bouquet.”
She took off her spectacles, wiped them, looked at me, and went on with her work without speaking.
“If I appear abrupt, madam,” said I, “in this opening, it is because the opportunity I now enjoy may never occur again, and may be of the briefest even now. We meet by what many would call an accident,—one of those incidents which the thoughtless call chance directed my steps to this place; let me hope that that which seemed a hazard may bear all the fruits of maturest combination, and that the weak words of one frail even as yourself may not be heard by you in vain. Let me, therefore, ask you one question,—only one,—and give me an honest answer to it.”
“You are a very singular person,” said she, “and seem to have strangely forgotten the very simple circumstance that we meet for the first time now.”
“I know it, I feel it; and that it may also be for the last and only time is my reason for this appeal to you. There are persons who, seeing you here, would treat you with a mock deference, address you with a counterfeit respect, and go their ways; who would say to their selfish hearts, 'It is no concern of mine; why should it trouble me?' But I am not one of these. I carry a conscience in my breast; a conscience that holds its daily court, and will even to-morrow ask me, 'Have you been truthful, have you been faithful? When the occasion served to warn a fellow-creature of the shoal before him, did you cry out, “Take soundings! you are in shallow water,” or did you with slippery phrases gloss over the peril, because it involved no danger to yourself?'”