There was a solemnity and pathos in Mary’s manner which checked the conversation. James was the more touched because he felt it all so real, from one whose words were always yea and nay, so true, so inflexibly simple. Her eyes filled with tears, her face kindled with a sad earnestness, and James thought, as he looked, of a picture he had once seen in a European cathedral, where the youthful Mother of Sorrows is represented,
‘Radiant and grave, as pitying man’s decline;
All youth, but with an aspect beyond time;
Mournful, but mournful of another’s crime;
She looked as if she sat by Eden’s door,
And grieved for those who should return no more.’
James had thought he loved Mary; he had admired her remarkable beauty; he had been proud of a certain right in her before that of other young men, her associates; he had thought of her as the keeper of his home; he had wished to appropriate her wholly to himself;—but in all this there had been, after all, only the thought of what she was to be to him; and this, for this poor measure of what he called love, she was ready to offer an infinite sacrifice.
As a subtle flash of lightning will show in a moment a whole landscape—tower, town, winding stream, and distant sea—so that one subtle ray of feeling seemed in a moment to reveal to James the whole of his past life; and it seemed to him so poor, so meagre, so shallow, by the side of that childlike woman, to whom the noblest of feelings were unconscious matters of course, that a sort of awe awoke in him: like the Apostles of old, he ‘feared as he entered into the cloud:’ it seemed as if the deepest string of some eternal sorrow had vibrated between them.
After a moment’s pause, he spoke in a low and altered voice:—
‘Mary, I am a sinner. No psalm or sermon ever taught it to me, but I see it now. Your mother is quite right, Mary; you are too good for me; I am no mate for you. Oh, what would you think of me, if you knew me wholly? I have lived a mean, miserable, shallow, unworthy life. You are worthy, you are a saint, and walk in white! Oh, what upon earth, could ever make you care so much for me?’