“A man might have all the wealth in the world, and all the power, and all the adulation,” his voice acted upon her nerves like the low notes of a violin, “and if he were a man—if he were a real human being—and did not have love——” He paused and looked at her. “Without it life is lonelier than the grave.”
Emily was silent. She could see the grave, could hear the earth rattling down upon the coffin. Was he not stating the truth—a truth to shrink from?
He said: “I was born on a farm out West—the son of a man who was ruined in the East and went West to hide himself and to fancy he was trying to rebuild. He was sad and silent. And in that sad silence I grew up with books and nature for my companions. I longed to be a leader of men. I admired the great moral teachers of the past. I felt rather than understood religion—God, a world of woe, man working for his salvation through helping others to work out theirs. I cared nothing for theology—only for religion. I could feel—I never could reason; I cannot learn to reason. It isn’t important how I worked my way upward. It isn’t important how long the way or how painful. I went straight on, caring for nothing except the widest chances to help the march upward. You know what the parish downtown is—what the work is, how it has been built. But——” He paused, and when he spoke it was with an effort. “One by one I have lost my inspirations. And when I saw you there in Paris I saw as in a flash—it was like a miracle—what was the cause, why I was beaten in the very hour of victory.”
Emily had ceased to fight against the emotions which surged higher and higher under the invocation of his presence and his voice.
“A man of my temperament may not work alone,” he went on. “He must have some one—a woman—beside him. And they together must keep the faith—the faith in the here and the now, the faith in mankind and in the journey upward through the darkness, the fog, the cold, up the precipices, with many a fall and many a fright, but always upward and onward.”
He drew a long breath, and, looking down at her, saw her looking up at him, her eyes reflecting the glow of his enthusiasm.
“Yes,” she said, “by myself I am nothing. But with another I could do much, for I, too, love the journey upward.”
He stopped and caught both her hands in his. “I need you—need you,” he said. They were standing at the turn of the path near the Mall, facing the broad, snow-draped lawns. “And I feel that you need me. I am no longer alone. Life has a meaning, a purpose.”
“A purpose?” She drew her hands away and suddenly felt the cold and the sharp wind, and saw the tangled lines of the bare boughs, black and forbidding against the sunset sky. “What purpose? You forget.”
“No, I remember!” He spoke defiantly. “I have been permitting that which is dead to cling to me and shut out sunlight and air and growth. But I shall permit it no longer. I dare not.”