"Really, I am not jesting," she answered. "And I believe you are over-sensitive as to your own short-comings, whatever they happen to be. Because I have faith in your ability to do strong work, don't think I am going to skirmish around for a pedestal, or think I've found a piece of perfection in human nature, because they're not to be found, my friend."
"How old are you?" he asked her suddenly.
She laughed, feeling so clearly the tenor of his thought.
"Twenty-two by my birthdays, but old enough to know that the strongest workers in the world have not been always the most immaculate. What matter the sort of person one has been, or the life one has lived if he come out of it with knowledge and the wish to use it well? You have a certain power that is yours, to use for good or bad, and from a fancy that you should not teach or preach, you let it go to waste. Don't magnify peccadillos!"
"You seem to take for granted the fact that all my acts have been trifling—that only the promises are worthy," he said impatiently.
"I do believe," she answered smiling brightly, "that you would rather I thought you an altogether wicked person than an average trifler. But I will not—I do not believe it possible for you deliberately to do any wicked thing; you have too tender a heart, and—"
"You don't know anything about it!" he repeated vehemently. "What difference whether an act is deliberate or careless, so long as the effect is evil? I tell you the greater part of the suffering in the world is caused not by wicked intents and hard hearts, but by the careless desire to shirk unpleasant facts, and the soft-heartedness that will assuage momentary pain at the price of making a life-long cripple, either mentally, morally, or physically. Nine times out of ten the man whom we call soft-hearted is only a moral coward. Ah, don't help me to think of that; I think of it enough—enough!"
He brought his clenched hand down on the arm of the chair with an emphasis that was heightened by the knitted brow and compressed lips. He did not look at her. The latter part of the rapid speech seemed more to himself than to her. At least it admitted of no answer; the manner as much as the words kept her silent.
"Come! come!" he added, after a little, as if to arouse himself as well as her. "You began by giving me some good words of advice and suggestion; I must not repay you by dropping into the blues. For a long time I've been a piece of drift-wood, with nothing to anchor ambition to; but a change is coming, I think, and—and if it brings me fair weather, I may have something then to work for; then I may be worth your belief in me—I am not now. My intentions to be so are all right, but they are not always to be trusted. I said, before, that you had the faculty of making people speak the truth to you, if they spoke at all, and I rather think I am proving my words."
He arose and stood looking down at her. Since he had found so many words, she had seemed to lose hers; anyway, she was silent.