“But I can’t help it. I come from New England.”
“Ah! Then it’s stranger still. With the aid of a New England conscience you ought to cheat life out of the price.”
“I do try, but—” Emily sighed—“I’m always caught and made pay the more heavily.”
Stilson studied her curiously. He was smiling with some mockery as he said. “You must be cursed with a sense of duty. That sticks to one closer than his shadow. The shadow leaves with the sunshine. But duty is there, daylight or dark.”
“Especially dark,” said Emily. “What a slavery it is! To tramp the dusty, stony highway close beside gardens that are open and inviting; and not to be able to enter.”
His strong, handsome face became almost stern. “I don’t agree with you. Suppose that you entered the gardens, would they seem good if you looked back and saw your better self lying dead in the dust?” He seemed to be talking to himself not to her.
“But don’t you ever wish to be free?” she asked.
“I am free—absolutely free,” he said proudly. “One does not become free by license, by cringing before the stupidest, the most foolish impulses there are in him. I think he becomes free by refusing to degrade himself and violate the law of his own nature.”
“But—What is stupid and what isn’t?”
“No one could answer that in a general way. All I can say is—” Stilson seemed to her to be looking her through and through. “Did you ever have any doubt in any particular case?”