"If I don't have to get up I could do it. I won't be able to get up for about twenty minutes. But if you sit on that stump—so—I think I could manage it."
Resting on one elbow, he unlaced the shoes, knocked the sand out of them, and spent a long time over the operation. Then he wondered at their small size, and measured them, sole to sole, with his own boots while he chattered on, as usual, about nothing. Hers were not by any means microscopic shoes, but they seemed so to him, and he regarded them with some of the curiosity of the miners of Blue Dog Gulch, Nevada, when a woman's boot appeared among them after their two years' isolation from the interesting sex. There was something in the way he handled them that spoke of exile—something that stirred the compassion one might feel on seeing the monks of Man Saba tend their canaries.
The left shoe was put on with great care, and then he sat looking over the lake for a while in silence before beginning with the second. It was a long, well-chiseled foot, with high instep, and none of those knobs which sometimes necessitate long dresses, and in men's boots take such a beautiful polish. He pretended to brush some sand away, and then, banding over, kissed the silk-covered instep, and received an admonitory tap for his boldness.
"Fie, Morry! to kiss an unprotected lady's foot," said Margaret archly, as she took the shoe from him and put it on herself. "You have insulted me."
"Nay, Margaret, 'twas but the sign of my allegiance and fealty," said he, looking up with what tried to be an off-hand manner. "It is the old story," he said lightly; "the worship of the unattainable—the remnant, perhaps, of our old nature worship. If you were not better acquainted with the subject than I am, I could give you a discourse which would be, I assure you, very instructive as to how we have always striven after what we think to be good in the unattainable. We have been forbidden to worship the sun or to appease the thunders and lightnings, and, one by one, nearly all the objects of worship have been swept away, leaving a world that now does not seem to know what to do with its acquired instincts. One object is left, though, and I am inclined to think that men are never more thoroughly admirable than when influenced by the worship of the women who seem to them the best, that many thus come to know the pricelessness of good and the despair of evil, with quite as satisfactory practical results as any other creed could bring about."
"What, then, becomes of the search for the unattainable after marriage?" asked Margaret practically.
"I imagine that the search would continue, that the greatest peace of marriage is the consciousness of approaching good in being assisted to live up to a woman's higher ideals. It seems as if the condition of Milton's idyllic pair—'he for God only, she for God in him'—has but little counterpart in real life, and that, in a thousand cases to one, the morality of the wife is the main chance of the husband."
"I understand, then, that we are to be worshiped as a means toward the improvement of our husbands. I was hoping," said Margaret smiling, "that you were going to prove us to be real goddesses, worthy of devotion for ourselves—without more."
"You are raising a well-worn question—as to what men worship when they bow before a shrine. If you were the shrine, I should say generally the shrine. At other times they worship that which the shrine suggests. What I mean is, that it is a good thing for one to have a power with him capable of improving all the good that is in him. For myself, the point is somewhat wanting in interest, as I never expect to be able to put it to a practical test."
"Not get married, Maurice? Why will you never get married?"