“You ought not to tell me these things,” said Emily, as he paused. She felt guilty because she was permitting him to think her a Frenchwoman, when she was of his own country and city.
“Well—I have said enough. And how much good it has done me to confess! You could not possibly have a baser opinion of me than I deserve. Telling such things is nothing in comparison with living them. I have lied and lied and lied so long that the joy of telling the truth intoxicates me. I am like a man crawling up out of years in a slimy dungeon to the light. Do you suppose it would disturb his enjoyment to note that spectators were commenting upon his unlovely appearance?”
“After all, what you tell me is the commonplace of life. Who doesn’t live lies, cheating himself and others?”
“But I do not wish the commonplace, the false, the vulgar. There is something in me that calls for higher things. I demand a good God. I demand an immortal soul. I demand a right that is clear and absolute. And I long for real love—ennobling, inspiring. Why have I all these instincts when I am compelled to live the petty, swindling, cringing life of a brute dominated by the passion for self-preservation?”
Emily thought a moment, then with a twinkle of mockery in her eyes, yet with seriousness too, quoted: “Seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”
He smiled as the waters of his own fountain thus unexpectedly struck him in the face. “But my legs are weary, and my knuckles sore,” he replied. “Still—what is there to do but to persist? One must persist.”
“Work and hope,” said Emily, musingly. And she remembered Marlowe’s “work and love”; love had gone, but hope—she felt a sudden fresh upspringing of it in her heart.
When they set out from the hotel she had been in a reckless mood of despondency. She had lost interest in her work, she had lost faith in her future—was not the heart-interest the central interest of life, and what had become of her heart-interest? This stranger to whose power she had impulsively yielded in the first instance, had a magical effect upon her. His pessimism was not disturbing, for beneath it lay a tremendous belief in men and in destiny. It was his energy, his outgiving of a compelling masculine force, that aroused her to courage again. She looked at him gratefully and at once began to compare him with Marlowe. “What a child this man makes him seem,” she thought. “This is the sort of man who would inspire one. And what inspiration to do or to be am I getting from my husband?”
“You are disgusted with me.” The stranger was studying her face.
“No—I was thinking of some one else,” she replied—“of my own troubles.” And then she flushed guiltily, as if she had let him into her confidence—“a traitor’s speech” she thought. Aloud she said: “I must go. I thank you for the good you have done me. I can’t tell you how or why, but—” She ended abruptly and presently added, “I mustn’t say that I hope we shall meet again. You see, I have your awful secret.”