“Child,” he said in a low voice. “Child, you have been very dear to me.”
She looked up with streaming eyes.
“Say those words again—again,” she cried in faltering tones.
“They are true words, my dear,” he said. “The life which it has been decreed that I shall lead must be one of loneliness—what most men and all women call loneliness. Such joys of life as love and marriage and a home can never be for me. I have given myself over body and soul to the work of my Master, and I look on myself as separate forever from all the tenderness of life. They are not for me.”
“Why should they not be for you? You have need of them, Mr. Wesley?”
“Why should they not be for me, do you ask?” he cried. “They are not for me, because I have been set to do a work that cannot be done without a complete sacrifice of self. Because I have found by the bitterest experience, that so far as I myself am concerned—I dare not speak for another—these things war against the Spirit. If I thought it possible that a woman should be led to love me I would never see her again.”
“Oh, do not say that—do not say that!” she said piteously.
“I do say it,” he cried. “Never—never—never would I do so great an injustice to a woman as to marry her. I tell you that I would think of it as a curse and not a blessing. I know that I have been appointed to do a great work, and I am ready, with God's help, to trample beneath my feet everything of life that would turn my thoughts from that work. The words are sounding in my ear day and night—day and night, 'If any man come to Me and hate not his father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters—yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my Disciple.'”
He stood away from her, speaking fervently. His face, pale by reason of his illness, had become paler still: but his resolution had not faltered, his voice had not broken.
She had kept her eyes fixed upon him. The expression upon her face was one of awe.