"Oh, I was speaking generally," she said, looking down.
"It may be the truth; but if so, it is a perilous thing to be loved."
"Perilous?"
"Why, yes. How can the lover be sure that he really is what his mistress takes him for? After all, a man has and is nothing in himself. His life, his love, his goodness, such as they are, flow into him from his Creator, in such measure as he is capable or desirous of receiving them. And he may receive more at one time than at another. How shall he know when he may lose the talismanic virtue that won her love—even supposing he ever possessed it?"
"I don't know how to argue," said Mary Leithe; "I can only feel when a thing is true or not—or when I think it is—and say what I feel."
"Well, I am wise enough to trust the truth of your feeling before any argument."
This assertion somewhat disconcerted Mary Leithe, who never liked to be confronted with her own shadow, so to speak. However, she seemed resolved on this occasion to give fuller utterance than usual to what was in her mind; so, after a pause, she continued, "It is not only how much we are capable of receiving from God, but the peculiar way in which each one of us shows what is in him, that makes the difference in people. It is not the talisman so much as the manner of using it that wins a girl's love. And she may think one manner good until she comes to know that another is better."
"And, later, that another is better still?"
"You trust my feeling less than you thought, you see," said Mary, blushing, and with a tremor of her lips.
"Perhaps I am afraid of trusting it too much," Drayton replied, fixing his eyes upon her. Then he went on, with a changed tone and manner: "This metaphysical discussion of ours reminds me of one of Emerson's poems, whose book, by-the-by, I brought with me. Have you ever read them?"