"You are also an egotist. If you believe what you say you do, if it was really your firm conviction that my soul was in danger, there would be no getting rid of you. Night and day you would roam around French Cross, calling on me to repent."
"True, true," he said, "I acknowledge it with shame. Were I what I ought to be I would leave my desk to-morrow. Paltry worldly affairs would sink into insignificance. I would start on a holy crusade."
"Whereas you sit quietly here and will go quietly to your bank to-morrow, when if you and your church were carrying out the doctrines you profess you would have all Rossignol beating its breast,—but I am wearying you, let us talk on other subjects."
"First, Miss Gastonguay," he remarked, in a lower voice, "let me add a word that I have often wished to say to you. You do not care for me, and I do not blame you, but let me assure you of my respect and interest in you. You only lack personal religion,—will you not submit your heart to God?"
"No, I will not, Justin Mercer."
His face softened still more. "Once, long ago, when I was a boy, I heard my father's voice in the night. You know what a saintly man he became,—it was his frequent habit to rise from his bed and pray for the souls of his fellow men. That night I heard the mention of your name. He was praying that you might be saved. Miss Gastonguay, I believe you will."
She put her hand to her head. How many more blows was this young man to inflict on her. "I suppose you know," she said, with a sickly smile, "that I might have been your mother."
He smiled too.
"How long ago it all seems, and yet how recent. It might have been yesterday that slim young Sylvester, in his Sunday coat, and with his best stock about his neck, went with hanging head from this house, and my father, red with rage, stood brandishing his cane at him for daring to aspire to the hand of his daughter; while I, poor fool, looked from a window above and laughed. I had so many lovers that I could afford to surrender one. However, I liked him more than I at the time suspected," she went on with more vigour, "though you must not tell your wife any story about a spoiled love match. I have not married because I have chosen to remain single. Middle age and old age are practical. Youth is a far away dream. I did not suffer much, and your father certainly soon consoled himself with a woman better fitted to be a Puritan's wife than dancing Jane Gastonguay ever was. Don't you think so?" and she peered into his face.
Justin, in his stubborn honesty, would not discuss the matter with her. She had flirted with his father and broken his heart, thereby promoting him to saintship gained through much suffering, and he strongly suspected that she had also broken her own heart, and that her peculiarities were the result of this perversion of her feminine nature. She should have married and become the contented mother of a family.