‘I daresay you may be right. Men of the world usually are right, on the outside, at any rate; but I look inside, and it seems to me that all this is very sad and dreadful, too. Life is full of these horrible contradictions, and it appears as if you can never have any good or beautiful thing without, as it were, a heap of dust and ashes beside it, spoiling it all.’
Gilbert laughed a little, and she felt chilled—not vexed with him—as she was conscious she ought to have been, but discouraged by the fact that he was about to differ from her.
‘Why, of course,’ he admitted. ‘Is it not in the very nature of life, as we know life, that it should be so? What are the good and beautiful things, as you call them, except sacrifices and aspirations or struggles after something higher and better than our everyday fight and grind? And how can you have beautiful sacrifices without something bad and mean to call them out? and how can you aspire after the better, without a worse which makes the better desirable to you? But for the dustheaps, I do not really see how the shrines and temples would ever get their due share of admiration.’
‘Admiration!’ repeated Eleanor, indignantly; ‘as if one admired a holy place! I daresay you have risen superior to all such superstitious considerations, but I say again, I think it is horrible; and I maintain that I do not think Miss Wynter is a good or a high-principled woman, and I am very sorry Otho is going to marry her.’
‘Which of them do you look upon as the temple, and which as the cinder-heap?’ asked Gilbert politely, but with a queer look. Eleanor was furious with herself for laughing out, quickly and readily; but she had to admit that Gilbert had the best of it. Then a sudden gravity came over her; she caught her breath, and looked at him in renewed bewilderment. In what light did he wish her to see him; how did he desire her to view him, that he, who had cheated his brother, and undermined his father’s integrity, should have the effrontery to sit there and talk lightly about wrong being necessary to call forth the higher life, and to say that temples could not be properly ‘admired,’ unless there were sordid details close to them, to emphasise their beauty? Seen from her point of view, his conversation was sickening in its hypocrisy and unreality; and yet—again the feeling of surprise came over her—she was interested in it; she could not feel revolted. Was the man’s personal influence really so potent as to nullify all the effect of what she knew to his disadvantage?
Gilbert had listened to her last words with an amused smile, betraying by nothing whether she hurt him or not; his gaze met hers steadily, and he continued to watch her while she silently reflected. At last he said, lightly still, and coldly—
‘I see you are wondering what to make of me. It is very natural—in you; and if you can trust me far enough to believe that anything disinterested can proceed out of my mouth, I would suggest to you not to go on wondering any more, but to listen to me, and attentively consider what I have to say to you.’
Eleanor started, reddening with confusion, and feeling, with a sudden revulsion, as some child might, which, instead of attending to its professor’s discourse, had been speculating about the wrinkles on the brow of the learned man, and was suddenly called to order. An immense distance seemed to open up at once between her and Gilbert. She remembered the sentiments she had attributed to him of admiration for herself, and felt that egregious vanity must have led her very far astray.
‘Indeed, I will listen to whatever you have to say. I think you are very kind to take so much trouble about—poor Otho.’
‘“Poor Otho,” as you call him, is my oldest friend; I know him better than any one else does, except perhaps the lady we have been speaking of, whose acquaintance with him dates from the very same time. You laughed just now—you could not help it. Does not your common sense now explain to you that it is much better to take men as they are, and provide them with the best that circumstances will allow, instead of wanting to insist on their having for mate an ideal which does not suit, and which they would hate if they had to live with it? That is my view of the case.’