My judgment coincided emphatically with her words, and I said: "I spoke only in jest. It certainly would not be right. It would be all wrong if you were to meet him."
"That is true," the girl responded with firmness, "but—but no real harm could come of it," she continued, laughing nervously. "He could not strike me nor bite me. Of course it would be unpleasant for me to meet him, and as there is no need—I am curious to know what one of his race is like. It's the only reason that would induce me to consent. Of course you know there could be no other reason for me to wish—that is, you know—to be willing to meet him. Of course you know."
"Certainly," I replied, still clinging to my unsuccessful irony. "I will tell you all I know about him, so that you may understand what he is like. As for his personal appearance, you saw him, did you not?"
I thought surely that piece of irony would not fail, but it did, and I have seldom since attempted to use that form of humor.
"Yes—oh, yes, I saw him for a moment."
"But I will not present him to you, Dorothy, however much you may wish to meet him," I said positively.
"It is almost an insult, Cousin Malcolm, for you to say that I wish to meet him," she answered in well-feigned indignation.
The French blood in my veins moved me to shrug my shoulders. I could do nothing else. With all my knowledge of womankind this girl had sent me to sea.
But what shall we say of Dorothy's conduct? I fancy I can hear you mutter, "This Dorothy Vernon must have been a bold, immodest, brazen girl." Nothing of the sort. Dare you of the cold blood—if perchance there be any with that curse in their veins who read these lines—dare you, I say, lift your voice against the blessed heat in others which is but a greater, stronger, warmer spark of God's own soul than you possess or than you can comprehend? "Evil often comes of it," I hear you say. That I freely admit; and evil comes from eating too much bread, and from hearing too much preaching. But the universe, from the humblest blade of grass to the infinite essence of God, exists because of that warmth which the mawkish world contemns. Is the iron immodest when it creeps to the lodestone and clings to its side? Is the hen bird brazen when she flutters to her mate responsive to his compelling woo-song? Is the seed immodest when it sinks into the ground and swells with budding life? Is the cloud bold when it softens into rain and falls to earth because it has no other choice? or is it brazen when it nestles for a time on the bosom of heaven's arched dome and sinking into the fathomless depths of a blue black infinity ceases to be itself? Is the human soul immodest when, drawn by a force it cannot resist, it seeks a stronger soul which absorbs its ego as the blue sky absorbs the floating cloud, as the warm earth swells the seed, as the magnet draws the iron? All these are of one quality. The iron, the seed, the cloud, and the soul of man are what they are, do what they do, love as they love, live as they live, and die as they die because they must—because they have no other choice. We think we are free because at times we act as we please, forgetting that God gives us the "please," and that every act of our being is but the result of a dictated motive. Dorothy was not immodest. This was her case. She was the iron, the seed, the cloud, and the rain. You, too, are the iron, the seed, the cloud, and the rain. It is only human vanity which prompts you to believe that you are yourself and that you are free. Do you find any freedom in this world save that which you fondly believe to exist within yourself? Self! There is but one self, God. I have been told that the people of the East call Him Brahma. The word, it is said, means "Breath," "Inspiration," "All." I have felt that the beautiful pagan thought has truth in it; but my conscience and my priest tell me rather to cling to truths I have than to fly to others that I know not of. As a result, I shall probably die orthodox and mistaken.