"Would to Heaven that I had met such a girl as you at first!" he ventured to say. "How different then all might have been!"
"There is no use in dwelling on the past," she replied, innocently.
"You are now pledged to make the future right."
"God helping me, I will. I will use every means in my power," he said, in a tone of deep earnestness; and, as principal part of the means, determined to take her advice, but with reference to herself. After a few moments he said, "Miss Walton, as I promised to be perfectly frank with you, I want to ask an explanation of something that I do not understand, and which has been almost a heavenly surprise to me. I was nearly certain before this afternoon that when you came to know what a stained, evil man I am—"
"Was," interrupted Annie.
"No, what I am. Character is not made in a moment. As yet, I only hope and purpose to do better. I can hardly understand why you do not shrink from me in disgust. It seemed that both your faith and your nature would lead you to do this. I thought it possible that out of your kindness you might try to stand at a safe distance and give me some good advice across the gulf. But that which I feared would drive you from me forever has only brought you nearer. Again I say, it has been a heavenly surprise."
"You use the word 'heavenly' with more appropriateness than you think," she replied, gravely. "All such surprises are heavenly in their origin, and my course is but a faint reflection of Heaven's disposition toward you, and was prompted by the duty I owe to God as well as to you. Self-righteousness would have led me in Pharisaic pride to say, 'Stand aside, I am holier than thou.' But you have only to read the life of the perfect One to know that in so doing I should not have been like Him. He laid His rescuing hands on both the physical and the moral leper—"
"As you have upon me," said Gregory, with a look of such intense gratitude that she was embarrassed.
"I deserve no great credit, for it was only right that I should do the utmost in my power to help you. How else could I be a Christian in any real sense? But there is nothing strange about it. Christianity is not like false religions, that require unnatural and useless sacrifices. If I were a true physician, and found you suffering from a terrible and contagious disease, while I feared and loathed the disease, I might have the deepest sympathy for you and do my best to cure you. I do loathe the sin you confessed, inexpressibly. See how near it came to destroying you. While God hates the sin, He ever loves the sinful."
"I hope you will always be divine in that respect," he could not forbear saying, with rising color.
But her thoughts were so intent on what was uppermost in her heart that she did not notice his covert meaning, and said, innocently, "I will give you honest friendship so long as you honestly try to redeem the pledges of to-day."