“But youth and beauty are not everything,” remonstrated Cicely with a very unusual colour in her cheeks.
“They are a good deal,” said Mr. Guildford drily.
A slight look of disappointment over-clouded the girl’s fair face, but she said nothing. A curious feeling came over her that the man beside her was not expressing his true sentiments, and this instinct made her averse to say more. But Mr. Guildford understood her better than she thought.
“You are disgusted with me, Miss Methvyn,” he said. “You think I am worse than commonplace, that I don’t believe in there being women whose grandeur and real beauty have little to say to ‘the beauty that must die.’ But you are mistaken.”
Cicely’s face cleared; but she still looked puzzled.
“Then I must confess I don’t understand you,” she said.
“You can’t reconcile my having a high ideal of woman, with my talking in a commonplace matter-of-fact way of marriage? But do not facts strengthen my position? Don’t think I mean to compare myself with such people; but isn’t it true that the giants among men have not looked for, or wished for anything out of the way in their wives? And when a man is by no means a giant, but still feels he has it in him to do something, surely his best strength lies in keeping his powers concentrated, in deprecating any overwhelming outside influence?”
He spoke almost as if he were trying to argue his theory out to himself, to prove its soundness for his own satisfaction rather than for that of his hearer. And his hearer was not to be so readily convinced.
“But, appealing to facts, as you say,” she objected, “you cannot maintain that women’s influence has not in innumerable instances, been an elevating and ennobling one, as well as a softening and purifying one? Of course whatever softens and purifies ennobles, in a sense, but I mean ennobling in the sense of strengthening and widening.”
“Women’s influence has certainly done all you say,” he replied; “but it has seldom been the influence of wives. The grandest women make splendid friends; but I still appeal to past experience to support the side of my position which I see you dislike.”