“One afternoon when you were away I had a fancy to look at your cottage. I came—and found someone there. I questioned the girl. She was a friend of yours, she said. She was confused; what she said seemed incapable of bearing more than one interpretation. I accepted the inference—and that afternoon there was plain speaking—on the lawn.”
He was no longer steady on his feet, and in his ears was the rushing of strange sounds, trees and sky were mixed up together.
“You believed—that?” he gasped.
“I judged you,” she answered, “by the standard of a world which I believed to be lower than yours. Remember, too, that in many ways I knew so little of you. Different classes of society regard the same thing from such different points of view. Yes, I judged you. I want your forgiveness.”
He looked at her wildly.
“What infernal sophistry,” he cried. “What is sin in your world is sin in mine!”
“Mind,” she continued drearily, “I do not say that even without this I could have answered you differently.”
“Don’t you know why I came,” she said at last impulsively—“It is because you are a man—because you have power and a great future. I want you to rouse yourself—I want you to make a stir in the world. This is what I have come to say to you—to preach a very simple doctrine. Make the best of things. There is room for you in great places, Enoch Strone. This generation is empty of strong men. Fill your life with ambitions and remember all those wonderful dreams of yours. Strive to realize them. Tell Milly about them; let her know each day how you are getting on. Come out of the crowd, Enoch, and let me feel that I have known one man in my life, at least, who was strong enough to climb to the hilltop with another’s burden upon his shoulders.”
Under the spell of her words his apathy and indifference gave way. Life was there in her face—in her voice. He listened to her with kindling eyes, conscious that the old passion for life was moving once more in his veins—conscious, too, with a certain sense of wonder at the transformation, that this woman, who was pleading with him so earnestly, stood revealed in a wholly new light. The delicate vein of mockery, which sometimes gave to her most serious sayings an air of insincerity, as though conversation were a mere juggling with words, seemed to have passed away. She spoke without languor or weariness, and her words touched his heart—stirred his brain.
The man in him leaped up, vigorous and eager. He faced her with glowing eyes.