“You will not leave me alone,” she said. “It is too bad.”
Poor woman! It was well for her she could pray to God in her trouble; for she could scarcely endure a word from her fellow-man. She, despairing before God, was fierce as a tigress to her fellow-sinner who would stretch a hand to help her out of the mire, and set her beside him on the rock which he felt firm under his own feet.
“I will not leave you alone, Catherine,” I said, feeling that I must at length assume another tone of speech with her who resisted gentleness. “Scorn my interference as you will,” I said, “I have yet to give an account of you. And I have to fear lest my Master should require your blood at my hands. I did not follow you here, you may well believe me; but I have found you here, and I must speak.”
All this time the wind was roaring overhead. But in the hollow was stillness, and I was so near her, that I could hear every word she said, although she spoke in a low compressed tone.
“Have you a right to persecute me,” she said, “because I am unhappy?”
“I have a right, and, more than a right, I have a duty to aid your better self against your worse. You, I fear, are siding with your worse self.”
“You judge me hard. I have had wrongs that—”
And here she stopped in a way that let me know she WOULD say no more.
“That you have had wrongs, and bitter wrongs, I do not for a moment doubt. And him who has done you most wrong, you will not forgive.”
“No.”