“It is very difficult to know what to do,” pursued Cicely sadly. “Perhaps it would have been better for me if I had been left quite poor, then there would have been no doubt about it; I should have had to work for my daily bread.”
“Don’t say that,” interrupted Mr. Hayle.
“Why not?”
“You do not know as well as I do what working for your daily bread means.”
“Perhaps not,” she replied, “but at least it would have been something to do. As it is, no occupation is forced upon me and I have no energy to seek any. You don’t know how difficult it is for me even to wish to live.”
She leant back in her chair in an attitude of listless despondency. Mr. Hayle did not speak for a minute or two; he seemed to be thinking deeply.
“Miss Methvyn,” he said suddenly, “there is one way open to you in which I believe you might be of the greatest use. You underrate your own powers, I think. I believe you are capable of doing immense good among the poor and wretched. It is confidence in yourself that you want. This you would acquire if—if you were with any one who would always be ready to encourage you and sympathise with you.”
“Perhaps I might,” said Cicely. “It is loneliness that appals me as much as anything. I am strong I know—perhaps I might get over my shrinking from the sight of misery in time, if, as you say, I could look for direction to some one wiser. But I could never make up my mind to join one of your sisterhoods, Mr. Hayle. You are not thinking of that again, are you?”
She looked up with a very slight sparkle of her old playful manner, but the clergy man’s face grew graver.
“No,” he said, “I was not thinking of that.”