"You didn't mean to do that!" Marion said, in an awe-stricken voice; she was astonished and shocked, and bewildered as to what to say.
Ruth answered her almost fiercely:
"No, I didn't mean to; and as to that, I never meant to do anything that was not just right in my life; but I meant to have just exactly my own way of doing things, and I tell you I took it. Now, Marion, while I blame myself as no other person ever can, I still blame others. I was never taught as I should have been about the sacredness of human loves, and the awfulness of human vows and pledges. I was never taught that for girls to dally with such pledges, to flirt with them, before they knew anything about life or about their own hearts was a sin in the sight of God. I ought to have been so taught.
"Perhaps if I had had a mother to teach me I should have been different; but I am not even sure of that. Mothers seem to me to allow strange trifling with these subjects, even if they do not actually prepare the way. But all this does not relieve me. I have sinned; no one but myself understands how deeply, and no one but me knows the bitterness of it.
"Now I feel as though the whole of the rest of my life must be given to atone for this horrible fatal mistake. I wasted the last hour I ever had with a soul, and I have before me the awful consciousness that I might have saved it.
"It is all done now, and can never be undone; that is the saddest part of it. But there is one thing I can do; I need never live through a like experience again; I will give the rest of my life to atone for the past; I will never again be guilty of coming in contact with a soul, unprepared for death, without urging upon that soul, as often as I have opportunity, the necessity for preparation; I see plainly that it is the important thing in life."
There hovered over Marion's mind, while these last sentences were being spoken, words something like these:
"The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth from all sin."
She almost said to Ruth that even for this sin the atonement had been made; she must not try to make another. But the error that only faintly glimmered in Ruth's sentence was so mixed with solemn and helpful truth that she felt at a loss as to whether there was error at all, and so held her peace.
