‘It is a sin, then, to love your sister? or your friend? What a low, material view of love, to fancy that you can cut it up into so many pieces, like a cake, and give to one person one tit-bit, and another to another, as the Popish books would have you believe! Love is like flame—light as many fresh flames at it as you will, it grows, instead of diminishing, by the dispersion.’
‘It is a beautiful imagination.’
‘But, oh, how miserable and tantalising a thought, Miss Lavington, to those who know that a priceless spirit is near them, which might be one with theirs through all eternity, like twin stars in one common atmosphere, for ever giving and receiving wisdom and might, beauty and bliss, and yet are barred from their bliss by some invisible adamantine wall, against which they must beat themselves to death, like butterflies against the window-pane, gazing, and longing, and unable to guess why they are forbidden to enjoy!’
Why did Argemone withdraw her arm from his? He knew, and he felt that she was entrusted to him. He turned away from the subject.
‘I wonder whether they are safe home by this time?’
‘I hope my father will not catch cold. How sad, Mr. Smith, that he will swear so. I do not like to say it; and yet you must have heard him too often yourself.’
‘It is hardly a sin with him now, I think. He has become so habituated to it, that he attaches no meaning or notion whatsoever to his own oaths. I have heard him do it with a smiling face to the very beggar to whom he was giving half-a-crown. We must not judge a man of his school by the standard of our own day.’
‘Let us hope so,’ said Argemone, sadly.
There was another pause. At a turn of the hill road the black masses of beech-wood opened, and showed the Priory lights twinkling right below. Strange that Argemone felt sorry to find herself so near home.
‘We shall go to town next week,’ said she; “and then—You are going to Norway this summer, are you not?’