Emily hesitated, her eyes shifting, a faint flush rising to her cheeks. “Yes,” she said.
“Then that very doubt told you what was foolish and what intelligent. Didn’t it?”
Stilson was not looking at her now and she studied his face—mature yet young, haughty yet kind. Strong passions, good and bad, had evidently contended, were still contending, behind that interesting mask.
“No,” he went on, “if ever you make up your mind to do wrong,”—His voice was very gentle and seemed to her to have an undercurrent of personal appeal in it—“don’t lie to yourself. Just look at the temptation frankly, and at the price. And, if you will or must, why, pay and make off with your paste diamonds or gold brick or whatever little luxury of that kind you’ve gone into Mr. License’s shop to buy. What is the use of lying to one’s self? We are poor creatures indeed, it seems to me, if there isn’t at least one person whom we dare face with the honest truth.”
Emily had always had a profound respect for Stilson. She knew his abilities; and, while Marlowe had usually praised his friend with discreet reservations, she had come to know that Marlowe regarded him as little, if at all, short of a genius in his power of leading and directing men. As he talked to her, restating the familiar fundamentals of practical morals, she felt a strong force at work upon her. Like Stanhope he impressed her with his great personal power; but wholly unlike him, Stilson seemed to be using that power to an end which attracted her without setting the alarm bells of reason and prudence to ringing.
“I’m rather surprised to find you so conventional,” said Emily, by way of resenting the effect he and his “sermon” were having upon her.
“Conventional?” Stilson lifted his eyebrows and gave her an amused, satirical look. “Am I? Then the world must have changed suddenly. No, I wasn’t pleading for any particular code of conduct. Make up your code to suit yourself. All I venture to insist is that you must live up to your own code, whatever it is. Be a law unto yourself; but, when you have been, don’t become a law breaker.”
“Do you think mamma will be well enough for me to go home to-morrow?” It was the little girl, weary of being unnoticed and bursting into the conversation.
Stilson started as if he had forgotten that she was there. “Perhaps—yes—dear,” he said and rose at once. “We must be going.”
“Good-bye,” said Mary. Emily took her hand and kissed it. But the child, with a quaint mingling of shyness and determination, put up her face to be kissed, and adjusted her lips to show where she wished the kiss to be placed. “Good-bye,” she repeated. “I know who you are now. You are the Violet Lady Uncle Robert puts in the stories he tells me.”