Yes, there was a sweetness—all the sweetness of true love. Love, which was generous, and could give without a hope of return; love, which in its friendship, in its self-sacrifice, in its faithfulness, should be like an angel in this man’s heart.
Thérèse looked at him with awe. Something in his words stirred her nature to its depths, showed her a height of which she had never dreamed. She had claimed happiness as a right, he accepted sorrow as a blessing. She had found only bitterness where he already spoke of sweetness. She cried out against her lot, he had faith that all should be for good. She had read of these things, she had in some degree thought of them in her devotions; but never before had she seen a life thus influenced, and it came upon her like a revelation.
“And therefore,” continued Max, still standing before her, and speaking in the same slow sentences, “you will understand that, though I may not often see you, it must be my greatest happiness to serve you, to be your friend and his. Do not deny me this. Do not fear me.”
“I do not fear you,” Thérèse answered, quickly. She wanted to say more, to thank him, but the words would not come. Involuntarily she put out her hand, he caught it, pressed it to his lips, held it there a moment, and was gone. She heard him clattering down the staircase, the little timepiece striking four, Nannon singing country songs to herself in a cracked wiry voice, doors opening and shutting, old familiar sounds with that touch of unreality which sometimes seizes them. The very patch of grey sky opposite to her, against which leafless trees waved solemnly backwards and forwards, looked like a strange, unnatural picture. She was too bewildered to collect her thoughts. Something seemed to have come to her, it may have been fresh hope, a new spring, which made her eye sparkle, and her colour rise. Had that echo found a stronger voice which whispered that there was something to be striven for higher than mere happiness? Perhaps. Such voices gather strength if we do not stifle them with our wilfulness.
Chapter Twelve.
“A temple, like a cloud
Slowly surmounting some invidious hill,
Rose out of darkness: the bright work stood still,
And might of its own beauty have been proud.
But it was fashioned, and to God was vow’d
By virtues that diffused, in every part,
Spirit divine through forms of human art
...
...Hope had her spire
Star-high, and pointing still to something higher.”
Wordsworth.
People who are compassionate and give themselves heartaches over suffering which seems undeserved, would be wiser and happier if they at least acknowledged other points of view than their own. If they could look at them from all, they would see gain where now they only see cost. No one ever knew what this interview, which had wrung the heart of one, did for Thérèse; not even Thérèse herself, certainly not Max. But it happened at a time when things were very bad with her, when she was losing ground, growing bitter, hard, angry with her lot. She had a feeling as if no one would help her, and that is a very unwholesome conviction to take root in any one’s heart, especially one so young as Thérèse. In the midst of it all there came this revelation. While she believed herself uncared for, this, great tender, unselfish love had been growing round her. The love she pictured was exacting, jealous, almost fierce; that which had been opened to her seemed something nobler, more divine. She acknowledged that, while her heart still clung to Fabien. Nay, Fabien had never been so well loved as after Max Deshoulières had shown her his own nobility. She felt her heart-burnings and want of faith so petty! She felt as if she could be more patient, more trustful, more content, now that this man had put before her a living picture of what love might be.