“It is hard!” she said, smiling.
“Darling! Do you remember the white violets at Woodbridge, and sitting on that gate looking across that deep valley at the bonfires? Wasn't it perfect? Look through these trees now—see the flames and smoke? They are burning dead leaves and twigs. I wish I could burn my past. This may be a good omen for me. But I must not deceive you; that would be a bad beginning.”
“We must decide on some course,” said Agnes. “Your letter was quite clear, but I suppose I am not going on as I ought to do. My present position is that of a person telling a lie to people. Before you wrote, however, I had made up my mind to some change. I could give no good grounds for carrying out my engagement to Beauclerk. The motives would not bear examination. I intended to be patient till the way was mercifully cleared for me. Even birds, in cold weather, grow tame from distress. So I waited in a dull, frozen way for what might happen.”
He remembered, with a pang of remorse, that he had once called this devoted woman an accomplished, incurable Philistine.
“I must put myself in the wrong with regard to Beauclerk,” she continued quietly. “That is merely fair to him. Every one shall know that I have been weak and vacillating. May God forgive me and humble me—for I shall not be understood, even by many good people. But the next worst thing to making an error is to abide by it. Dear David, try to follow my feeling. It has all passed in my mind in such a way that it is impossible for me to describe it. In a sense, giving Reckage up seems to uproot me altogether from all my former life, and the future is only not a blank because it is such a mystery. I am sure, though, that sorrow is never in God's ordinance the whole law of life. These are great compensations.”
“Anything is better than to sit still and dream,” said Rennes. “I have dreamt too long. I find solitude oppressive. Yet you will admit how dreadful it is to live among those who don't know or don't care a bit about art.”
“But there are other interests equally engrossing.”
“Not to me. And even Epicurean advice is only the way to ignominious, contemptible happiness. I must have an ideal life or else annihilation—splendid misery or splendid content—nothing between the two.”
“You have not half showed your capabilities yet,” replied Agnes. “We have to look upon this world as the merest pilgrimage, but we can help each other. I have hope because I have faith. Sara de Treverell said the other day that, in men, experience often makes mere callousness of character. Is this true, David?”
“Not of me; you have saved me from the worst things. But it simply worries and almost exasperates me to hear religious talk from any one. When I hear a sermon I feel an inclination always to say, ‘My dear fellow, can't you put your case better?’ I want good stuff about Divine and human nature—not this vagueness and platitude. Why don't they tell one something about the optimism of God, even before the spectacle of men's weakness? But, instead, we are told to moan about this vale of tears; we are promised chastisements, disappointments, woes, persecution. A philosophy of suffering makes men strong, but a philosophy of despair is bound to make a generation of pleasure-seekers.”