What would he have her do? The man within him cried: "I would have you love me, kiss me, pillow my head upon your breast and let me die there!" But the man within him was audible only to him. "I would advise you to read"—he stopped. What he had been about to say was so utterly incongruous—to advise reading the Westminster Confession, when he longed to call upon her to read the secrets of his soul!
"I have read enough," she answered. "Lately I have done better"—she hesitated; he noted the flushed cheek and downcast eyes, the tremulous tone of her voice. She was affected, he believed, religiously. He remembered the day on the terrace of Heidelberg, when he had so yearned over the wandering soul, and again with his love—for he knew it was love, and always had been—was mingled the higher aspiration to reconcile the wayward spirit with its Maker. He would have taken her hand, but he felt tremulously shy. "What have you done?" he asked gently.
Much had been told her of the sweet relief of confession to a priest. Here was a confessor, sympathetic, she knew from his tone. Yet she had no sins to confess (belief in which incongruity demonstrates her state of darkness).
"I—have prayed," she said at length, and the shy admission seemed to create a bond between them. Another shared her confidence, and the fact lightened her spirit. She told herself it was so, and had it been true the future might have been brighter; but the real secret of her heart was never to be told by her to him. She looked up, a faint sheen of tears in her eyes, a smile upon her lips.
"Indeed, you have done better," he answered, the eyes and the smile summoning that inner man with a power hard to resist. "You need no guidance from me," he said huskily. "God bless and help you, Natalie!" He placed a trembling hand upon her head, as was seemly in a priest, and, turning abruptly, walked away.
"Ah!" she sighed, as she watched him. "There must be something in religion. Fräulein Rothe was right, and my dear father was wrong."
Thus Leonard's fears concerning Natalie's salvation were quieted. If she prayed, it was plain that she was called, and though her ears might still be deaf, she would hear in the appointed time.
Had he comprehended her utter misapprehension as to orthodox tenets, he might have been awakened to a stricter sense of duty. But this was his first heathen, and he is hardly to be blamed that he did not recognize the extent of her ignorance; or, in his lack of knowledge of humanity, at all to be blamed that he failed to discern the true nature of her religious cravings, alluring to her soul because her soul was hungry; for God, perhaps—for who shall say that God has no part in human love?—but not for Leonard's God. He had never been informed of the deceased philosopher's method of training, and would, certainly, have doubted its success had he known of it. That one could attain years of discretion in a Christian country, lacking even an elementary knowledge of Christian doctrine, would have been to Leonard incredible. He could not remember the time that he had not known that in Adam's fall we all fell, and that had there been no Atonement there would be no Salvation. For so much, and similar doctrinal essentials, he accorded Natalie full credit; and, since she had escaped the taint of Romanism, he felt that no real obstacle stood in the way of her growth in grace.
Meanwhile, Natalie had no more knowledge that, unless her name had been from before creation inscribed upon the roll of the elect, she must, for the glory of God, infallibly be damned, than has a Patagonian. She felt that outside of humanity there was something on which humanity must lean, and that it was God. Priests, sisters of charity and sweet girls like Paula knew about God, and all these had told her that the way to find out what they knew was to pray; and, in her outer darkness, she prayed, her prayers the prayers of a heathen; not heard in heaven, if we are correctly informed as to heaven's willingness to hear. Yet to her they brought some solace. And in her petitions for enlightenment of her ignorance, she besought happiness for others, not for Mark Claghorn only; henceforth she included the name of Leonard.
As for him, he was no longer haunted by troublesome recollections of Berthe. He thought of her, it is true, and with tenderness, though with a smile, and accusing himself of youthfulness. He was now sure that he had never seriously loved her. It had been a penchant, a petit amour—the Gallic flavor of the words was not altogether ungrateful—and the experience would have its uses. These things happened to some men; happy they who escaped them; a humdrum life was safer. Sinning was dangerous; to weaklings, fatal; such a one would have been burned in the ordeal of fire. He had escaped, nor had he any intention of being again taken unawares. He did not attempt to palliate the grave wrong of which he had been guilty; he would have resented such palliation on the part of an apologist. In certain sins there lurks a tinge of glory, and one has a right, accepting the blame, to appropriate the glory. But his resolve that the one misstep should be the last, as it had been the first of his life, was sternly made. He was strong now, and was glad to admit that much of his strength derived its power from a sweeter passion glowing in his bosom. His heart swelled with joy that he could love, feeling only such misgivings as lovers must. It was a sin to love and long for Berthe whom he wouldn't marry. To transfer to Natalie the love he had given to Berthe, to hunger and to burn, to feed his eyes upon the outward form, unheeding the fairer creature within, to revel in visions and forbidden dreams—this was love, this the lesson his carefully guarded life had prepared him to learn from wanton lips.