“Do you think you would be helping them out of the mists of darkness?” asked the girl, suddenly turning her eyes upon him, with a look he could not fathom.
“Certainly,” he answered quickly, and without hesitation.
Her face was turned away then. He only saw the pale pure profile outlined against the sky.
“I am afraid not,” she answered, in a quiet serious way, that indicated sadness if not depression; “there are worse forms of darkness than intellectual darkness.”
“Do you think so?” he answered, in a tone that implied absolute disagreement.
“I know it,” she answered, without the smallest hesitation. “Intellectual darkness is sad, carried to the extent we see it here. But spiritual darkness is a thousand times sadder, and, oh! how much more difficult to enlighten!”
He said nothing. “Why try to argue with a fanatic?” he thought, and they took their homeward way in silence.
Bride left him at the castle door and went quietly up to her room. Eustace stood looking after her.
“You are very beautiful, my cousin,” he said to himself, “and you fascinate me as no woman has fascinated me yet; but you are a mystic and a fanatic both—and both these are beings inexplicable to me—and yet I shall try to find you out, and teach you that there are nobler things a woman can be than you have dreamed of as yet.”
