"If she is old enough to receive the gift of a good man's love, she is old enough to know she has received it, and to thank Heaven fasting for it."
"But I am so old—compared with her."
"That is her business—at least, so it seems to me," replied Blathwayte. "If she thinks you are too old, she can refuse you. It is a thing that has been done. But I do think that she is old enough to choose for herself, and not to have things settled for her as if she were a child or an imbecile. She has plenty of common sense."
"But I doubt if she is old enough and experienced enough to choose in a thing like this. It would break my heart if she chose wrongly and regretted it afterwards."
"Hearts run the risk of getting broken in this work-a-day world, and they had better run that risk than remain wrapped up in cotton wool until they stifle and suffocate. If you'll excuse my saying so, Reggie, you are too fond of transferring personal responsibilities. You let Miss Kingsnorth make up your mind for you, and in return you propose to make up Fay's. For my part, I think it is best for people to make up their own minds, and to be prepared to take the consequences. It is in acting for oneself and in bearing the consequences of one's actions that the education of life consists, also the saving dogma of Free Will."
Thus inspired by Arthur I was tempted to put my scruples on one side and my fate to the test; but even yet I was haunted by doubts as to whether my doing so would be fair to Fay. I gave Arthur's counsel the consideration that it deserved: as a clergyman he was, so to speak, a specialist in the diagnosis of right and wrong, and also in all matters connected with the human soul. But—when all was said and done—he was a man and not a woman, and no episcopal laying on of hands can convey the power rightly to discern the workings of the female heart. So I decided that the person to help and advise me was not Blathwayte at all, but Annabel, as she was a woman herself and therefore the best judge as to how a woman would feel. I felt that my sister would necessarily understand Fay far better than either Arthur or I could. So I took Annabel into my confidence.
She listened to me carefully and sympathetically, just as she used to listen to a category of my physical symptoms when I was a little boy, and she feared I had caught some childish complaint.
"I am not surprised," she said, when I had finished; "I was afraid there would be some trouble of this kind after Fay's most remarkable recovery and your queer part in it." Annabel was one of the people who would always describe any direct answer to prayer as "remarkable." But "no offence meant," as the servants say. She absolutely believed in the God of Revelation; she stringently urged the imperative duty of prayer; yet when any obvious connection displayed itself between the human request and the Divine Response, she at once relegated the phenomenon to the realm of accidental coincidence, if not to that of hysterical imagination.
"I shouldn't describe it exactly as 'trouble,'" I remonstrated.
"I felt sure you'd fall in love with her, as you call it after her recovery seemed to be the result of your praying for her. Any man would," continued my sister, just in the same tone as thirty years ago she would have said, "I felt sure you would catch measles after having been exposed to the infection. Any child would." Evidently, now as then, Annabel pitied rather than blamed me. Her blame would be reserved for those who had exposed me to the infection.