And she longed to ask him why he was here, he, a man whose philosophy told him to avoid the heights and depths, to shun the ardours of nature and of life.
“Or, having come, one should leave it.”
A sensation of lurking danger increased upon her, bringing with it the thought of flight.
“One can always do that,” she said, looking at him. She saw fear in his eyes, but it seemed to her that it was not fear of peril, but fear of flight. So strongly was this idea borne in upon her that she bluntly exclaimed:
“Unless it is one’s nature to face things, never to turn one’s back. Is it yours, Monsieur Androvsky?”
“Fear could never drive me to leave Beni-Moni,” he answered.
“Sometimes I think that the only virtue in us is courage,” she said, “that it includes all the others. I believe I could forgive everything where I found absolute courage.”
Androvsky’s eyes were lit up as if by a flicker of inward fire.
“You might create the virtue you love,” he said hoarsely.
They looked at each other for a moment. Did he mean that she might create it in him?