“Angel!” accompanied by a closer and convulsive clasp, was the response.
“What do they say of poor me again, to-day, those cruel wicked people outside?” she asked, with eyes still reverentially upraised to his, as they moved slowly with clasped arms towards the cot, on the side of which they sat, she still leaning against his bosom.
“My good sister, they say what evil spirits always prompt men to say of the good, who, like the Prophets, are sent to be stoned and persecuted on earth. You should not regard such. There are those who know you in the spirit, to whom it has been revealed through the spiritual sense, that you are good and true, as well as in the right, and through such, you will find strength of the Father.”
“Oh, you are so strong in spiritual mightiness that you do not sympathise with the weaknesses of we humbler mortals! I wonder, indeed, how you can forgive them?” and her downcast eyes were furtively raised to his. The man wore his hair thrown back over his head and behind his ears. He drew himself up slightly at this, and stroked back his locks, then placing his hand with patriarchal solemnity upon her bowed head, proceeded in a somewhat louder tone. “My simple child—my soul-sister, I should say, you are hardly upon the threshold of the true wisdom. Your knowledge of the law of spiritual correspondence is yet too incomplete for you to understand how entirely good has been mistaken for evil, and evil confounded with good in the world. For instance—it is called evil by the ignorant world, for a brother man to caress thee in the spirit as I have caressed thee but now. The imaginations of a world that lieth in evil are impure. ‘Evil to him who evil thinks!’ The great doctrine of correspondence teaches that there are two lives—the spiritual and the animal. The passions of the animal are in the fleshly lusts; those of the spiritual are in no wise such, they are in the Heavenly sphere, they are of love and wisdom. Thus, my caress in this Heavenly sphere is of no sin to thee, for by and through it I convey to you, my spiritual sister, the strength of love and wisdom for which your heart yearns. Thus—”
As he stooped his head to renew the unresisted caress, the door flew open again, and the man with the wide mouth, the hideous chin and the leaden eye, stood again upon the threshold, and as the affrighted pair looked up they saw he was backed by the curious faces of half-a-dozen chambermaids, jealous of the honor of the house, flanked by the indignant landlady and a score of prying, curious, sharp-eyed faces, which might be recognised at a glance as belonging to those pickled seraphs of reform, known as “free-spoken” spinsters in New England.
“There, they are at it!” shouted the man with the gaping mouth. “I told you so! I told you that Professor was always kissing her!”
“Yes!”
“There they are, sure enough!”
“I always thought so!”
“The honor of my house!” bristled the landlady, striding forward. “I did not expect this of you, Professor!”