Dick’s voice was so sweet and he spoke so very quietly that it was not until some minutes after he had finished this short autobiography that Freda perceived all the bitterness he had expressed in it.
“Oh!” she sighed out at last, in a voice full of soft reproach. “How could you?”
Dick laughed a little.
“I don’t think I could make you understand. You are too good. I wish none of this business had ever come to your ears.”
Freda looked thoughtful for a few minutes. Then she said:
“I don’t wish that. You see I’ve been obliged to think a great deal lately, and I see that there is a great deal more wickedness and unhappiness in the world than we in the convent ever thought of. And it seems to me that to shut oneself up out of it all and to try to make a little heaven for oneself and to keep apart from all the difficulties and miseries outside is selfish. So that I’m glad I can’t be so selfish any longer.”
“Now I don’t quite agree with you. By coming out you only add to the general sum of misery in the world by one more miserable unit; where’s the advantage to your fellow-creatures of that?”
“But I don’t intend to be miserable. I am going to try to bring some of the convent’s happiness and peace to the people outside, or at least to—some of them.”
“I should like to know how you propose to set about it.”
“First, I am going to try to persuade—some people to give up doing what is wrong. I am going to try to persuade you.”