Helwyze and Olivia watched this brief wooing with peculiar interest. She, being happy herself, was full of good hope for Gladys, and let her step, unwarned, into the magic circle drawn around her. He sat as if at a play, enjoying the pretty pastoral enacted before him, content to let “summer and seclusion” bring the young pair together as naturally and easily as spring-time mates the birds. Suspense gave zest to the new combination, surprise added to its flavor, and a dash of danger made it unusually attractive to him.
Canaris came to him one day, with a resolute expression on his face, which rendered it noble, as well as beautiful.
“Sir, I will not do this thing; I dare not.”
“Dare not! Is cowardice to be added to disobedience and falsehood?” and Helwyze looked up from his book with a contemptuous frown.
“I will not be sneered out of my purpose; for I never did a braver, better act than when I say to you, ‘I dare not lie to Gladys.’”
“What need of lying? Surely you love her now, or you are a more accomplished actor than I thought you.”
“I have tried,—tried too faithfully for her peace, I fear; but, though I reverence her as an angel, I do not love her as a woman. How can I look into her innocent, confiding face, and tell her,—she who is all truth,—that I love as she does?”
“Yet that is the commonest, most easily forgiven falsehood a man can utter. Is it so hard for you to deceive?”
Quick and deep rose the hot scarlet to Canaris’s face, and his eyes fell, as if borne down by the emphasis of that one word. But the sincerity of his desire brought courage even out of shame; and, lifting his head with a humility more impressive than pride or anger, he said, steadily,—
“If this truth redeems that falsehood, I shall, at least, have recovered my own self-respect. I never knew that I had lost it, till Gladys showed me how poor I was in the virtue which makes her what she is.”