Ruth shuddered visibly.
"It is an 'awful' sorrow," she said; "you have used the right word with which to express it; but there is a shade to it that you do not understand. I don't believe that by experience you ever will; I pray God that you may not. Think of burying a friend in the grave without the slightest hope of ever meeting him in peace again!"
"You have nothing to do with that, Ruth; God is the judge. I don't think you ought to allow yourself to think of it."
"There I think you are mistaken; I believe I ought to think of it. Marion, you know, and I know, that there is simply nothing at all on which to build a hope of meeting in peace the man we buried last week. You think it almost shocking that I can speak of him in that way; I know you do. People are apt to hide behind the very flimsiest veil of fancied hopes when they talk of such things.
"Perhaps a merciful God permits some to hug a worthless hope when they think of their dead treasures, since it can do no harm to those who are gone; but I am not one of that class of people. Besides, I am appearing to you, and everybody, in a false light. I am tired of it. Marion, Mr. Wayne was not to me what he ought to have been, since I was his promised wife. You know how I have changed of late; you know there was hardly a thought or feeling of mine in which he could sympathize; but the worst of it is, he never did sympathize with me in the true sense; he never filled my heart.
"My promise to him was one of those false steps that people like me, who are ruled by society, take because it seems to be the proper thing to do next, or because we feel it might as well be that as anything; perhaps because it will please one's father in a business point of view, or please one's own sense of importance; satisfy one's desire to be foremost in the fashionable world. I am humiliating myself to tell you, plainly, that my promise meant not much more than that. I did not realize how empty it was till I found that all my plans, and aims, and hopes in life were changed. That, in short, life had come to seem more to me than a glittering weariness, that was to be borne with the best grace I could assume. This was nearly all I had found in society, or hoped to find.
"I followed Mr. Wayne to the grave in the position of chief mourner, because I felt that it was a token of respect that I owed to the memory of the man whom I had wronged, and because I felt that the world had no business with our private affairs; but he was not to me what people think he was, and I feel as though I wanted you to know it, even though it humiliates me beyond measure to make the confession. At the same time I have an awful sorrow, too awful to be expressed in words.
"Marion, I think you will understand what I mean when I say that I believe I have the blood of a lost soul clinging to my garments. I know as well as I sit here to-night that I might have influenced Harold Wayne into the right way. I know his love for me was so sincere, and so strong, that he would have been willing to try to do almost anything that I had asked. I believe in my soul that had I urged the matter of personal salvation on his immediate attention, he would have given it thought. But I never did—never.
"Marion, even on that last evening of his life—I mean before he was sick—when he himself invited the words, I was silent. I did not mean to continue so; I meant, when I got ready, to speak to him about this matter; I meant to do everything right; but I was determined to take my own time for it, and I took it, and now he is gone! Marion, you know nothing about such a sorrow as that! Now, why did I act in this insane way?
"I know the reason, one of them at least; and the awful selfishness and cowardice of it only brands me deeper. It was because I was afraid to have him become a Christian man! I knew if he did I should have no excuse for breaking the pledges that had passed between us; in plain words, I would have no excuse for not marrying him; and I did not want to do it! I felt that marriage vows would mean to me in the future what they never meant in the past, and that there was really nothing in common between Mr. Wayne and myself; that I could not assent to the marriage service with him, and be guiltless before God. So to spare myself, to have what looked like a conscientious excuse for breaking vows that ought never to have been made, I deliberately sacrificed his soul! Marion Wilbur, think of that!"