Now Mr. St. John was certainly as innocent and translucently ignorant of life as Adam at the first hour of his creation, not to know that the tone in which he was speaking and the impulse from which he spoke, at that moment, was in fact that of man's deepest, most absorbing feeling towards woman. He had made his scheme of life; and, as a set purpose, had left love out of it, as something too terrestrial and mundane to consist with the sacred vocation of a priest. But, from the time he first came within the sphere of Angelique, a strange, delicious atmosphere, vague and dreamy, yet delightful, had encircled him, and so perplexed and dizzied his brain as to cause all sorts of strange vibrations. At first, there was a sort of repulsion—a vague alarm, a suspicion and repulsion singularly blended with an attraction. He strove to disapprove of her; he resolved not to think of her; he resolutely turned his head away from looking at her in her place in Sunday-school and church, because he felt that his thoughts were alarmingly drawn in that direction.
Then came his invitation into society, of which the hidden charm, unacknowledged to himself, was that he should meet Angelique; and that mingling in society had produced, inevitably, modifying effects, which made him quite a different being from what he was in his recluse life passed between the study and the altar.
It is not in man, certainly not in a man so finely fibered and strung as St. John, to associate intimately with his fellows without feeling their forces upon himself, and finding many things in himself of which he had not dreamed.
But if there be in the circle some one female presence which all the while is sending out an indefinite though powerful enchantment, the developing force is still more marked.
St. John had never suspected himself of the ability to be so agreeable as he found himself in the constant reunions which, for one cause or another, were taking place in the little Henderson house. He developed a talent for conversation, a vein of gentle humor, a turn for versification, with a cast of thought rising into the sphere of poetry, and then, with Dr. Campbell and Alice and Angie, he formed no mean quartette in singing.
In all these ways he had been coming nearer and nearer to Angie, without taking the alarm. He remembered appositely what Montalembert in his history of the monks of the Middle Ages says of the female friendships which always exerted such a modifying power in the lives of celebrated saints; how St. Jerome had his Eudochia, and St. Somebody-else had a sister, and so on. And as he saw more and more of Angelique's character, and felt her practical efficiency in church work, he thought it would be very lovely to have such a friend all to himself. Now, friendship on the part of a young man of twenty-five for a young saint with hazel eyes and golden hair, with white, twinkling hands and a sweet voice, and an assemblage of varying glances, dimples and blushes, is certainly a most interesting and delightful relation; and Mr. St. John built it up and adorned it with all sorts of charming allegories and figures and images, making a sort of semi-celestial affair of it.
It is true, he had given up St. Jerome's love, and concluded that it was not necessary that his "heart's elect" should be worn and weary and wasted, or resemble a dying altar-fire; he had learned to admire Angie's blooming color and elastic step, and even to take an appreciative delight in the prettinesses of her toilette; and, one evening, when she dropped a knot of peach-blow ribbons from her bosom, the young divine had most unscrupulously appropriated the same, and, taking it home, gloated over it as a holy relic, and yet he never suspected that he was in love—oh, no! And, at this moment, when his voice was vibrating with that strange revealing power that voices sometimes have in moments of emotion, when the very tone is more than the words, he, poor fellow, was ignorant that his voice had said to Angie, "I love you with all my heart and soul."
But there is no girl so uninstructed and so inexperienced as not to be able to interpret a tone like this at once, and Angie at this moment felt a sort of bewildering astonishment at the revelation. All seemed to go round and round in dizzy mazes—the greens, the red berries—she seemed to herself to be walking in a dream, and Mr. St. John with her.
She looked up and their eyes met, and at that moment the veil fell from between them. His great, deep, blue eyes had in them an expression that could not be mistaken.
"Oh, Mr. St. John!" she said.