“This would be a night for a sail on the lake,” said Dimitrius. “Some evening you must come.”
She made no reply. Her soul was in her eyes—looking, looking wistfully at the beauty of the night, while all the old, unsatisfied hunger ached at her heart—the hunger for life at its best and brightest—for the things which were worth having and holding,—and absorbed in a sudden wave of thought she hardly remembered for the moment where she was.
“Millions of people look at this moon to-night without seeing it,” said Dimitrius, after a pause, during which he had watched her attentively. “Millions of people live in the world without knowing anything about it. They,—themselves,—are to them, the universe. Like insects, they grub for food and bodily satisfaction,—like insects, they die without having ever known any higher aim of existence. Yet, looking on such loveliness as this to-night, do you not feel that something more lasting, more real than the usual mode of life was and is intended for us? Does it not seem a flaw in the Creator’s plan that this creation should be invested with such beauty and perfection for human beings who do not even see it? Do we make the utmost of our capabilities?”
She turned her eyes away from the moonlit landscape and looked at him with rather a sad smile.
“I cannot tell—I do not know,” she answered. “I am not skilled in argument. But what almost seems to me to be the hardest thing in life is, that we have so little time to learn or to understand. As children and as very young people we are too brimful of animal spirits to think about anything,—then, when we arrive at ‘mature years’ we find we are ‘shelved’ by our fellow-men and women as old and unwanted. Women especially are sneered at for age, as if it were a crime to live beyond one’s teens.”
“Only the coarsest minds and tongues sneer at a woman’s age,” said Dimitrius. “They are the pigs of the common stye, and they must grunt. I see you have suffered from their grunting! That, of course, is because you have not put on the matrimonial yoke. You might get as old as the good Abraham’s wife, Sara, without a sneer, so long as you had become legitimately aged through waiting on the moods and caprices of a husband!” He laughed, half ironically,—then drawing nearer to her by a step, went on in a lower tone:
“What would you say if you could win back youth?—not only the youth of your best days, but a youth transfigured to a fairness and beauty far exceeding any that you have ever known? What would you give, if with that youth you could secure an increased mental capacity for enjoying it?—an exquisite vitality?—a delight in life so keen that every beat of your heart should be one of health and joy?—and that you should hold life itself”—here he paused, and repeated the words slowly—“that you should hold life itself, I say, in a ceaseless series of vibrations as eternal as the making and re-making of universes?”
His dark eyes were fixed upon her face with an intensity of meaning, and a thrill ran through her, half of fear, half of wonderment.
“What would I say?—what would I give? You talk like another Mephistopheles to a female Faustus!” she said, forcing a laugh. “I would not give my soul, because I believe I have a soul, and that it is what God commands me to keep,—but I would give everything else!”
“Your soul is part of your life,” said Dimitrius. “And you could not give that without giving your life as well. I speak of holding your life,—that is to say, keeping it. Understand me well! The soul is the eternal and indestructible pivot round which the mechanism of the brain revolves, as the earth revolves round the sun. The soul imparts all light, all heat, all creation and fruition to the brain, though it is but a speck of radiant energy, invisible to the human eye, even through the most powerful lens. It is the immortal embryo of endless existences, and in whatsoever way it instructs the brain, the brain should be in tune to respond. That the brain seldom responds truly, is the fault of the preponderating animalism of the human race. If you can follow me, still listen!”