“Is so far from an ideal one—would you say, my lady?”
“Something like that,” answered Clementina, and concluded,—“I wonder how you can have arrived at such ideas.”
“There is nothing wonderful in it, my lady,” returned Malcolm. “Why should not a youth, a boy, a child—for as a child I thought about what the kingdom of heaven could mean—desire with all his might that his heart and mind should be clean, his will strong, his thoughts just, his head clear, his soul dwelling in the place of life? Why should I not desire that my life should be a complete thing, and an outgoing of life to my neighbour? Some people are content not to do mean actions: I want to become incapable of a mean thought or feeling; and so I shall be before all is done.”
“Still, how did you come to begin so much earlier than others?”
“All I know as to that, my lady, is that I had the best man in the world to teach me.”
“And why did not I have such a man to teach me? I could have learned of such a man too.”
“If you are able now, my lady, it does not follow that it would have been the best thing for you sooner. Some children learn far better for not being begun early, and will get before others who have been at it for years. As you grow ready for it, somewhere or other you will find what is needful for you—in a book, or a friend, or, best of all in your own thoughts—the eternal thought speaking in your thought.”
It flashed through her mind, “Can it be that I have found it now —on the lips of a groom?”
Was it her own spirit or another that laughed strangely within her?
“Well, as you seem to know so much better than other people,” she said, “I want you to explain to me how the God in whom you profess to believe can make use of such cruelties. It seems to me more like the revelling of a demon.”