"I have often felt so," he said;--"but I am not sure that it is a mood to be indulged in--likely to further our own good or that of others."
"I am sure it is not," said Fleda;--"I often feel vexed with myself for it; but what can one do, Mr. Carleton?"
"Don't your friends the flowers help you in this?"
"Not a bit," said Fleda,--"they draw the other way; their society is so very pure and satisfying that one is all the less inclined to take up with the other."
She could not quite tell what to make of the smile with which he began to speak; it half abashed her.
"When I spoke a little while ago," said he, "of the best cure for an ill mood, I was speaking of secondary means simply--the only really humanizing, rectifying, peace-giving thing I ever tried was looking at time in the light of eternity, and shaming or melting my coldness away in the rays of the Sun of righteousness."
Fleda's eyes, which had fallen on her book, were raised again with such a flash of feeling that it quite prevented her seeing what was in his. But the feeling was a little too strong--the eyes went down, lower than ever, and the features shewed that the utmost efforts of self-command were needed to control them.
"There is no other cure," he went on in the same tone;--"but disgust and weariness and selfishness shrink away and hide themselves before a word or a look of the Redeemer of men. When we hear him say, 'I have bought thee--thou art mine,' it is like one of those old words of healing, 'Thou art loosed from thine infirmity,'--'Be thou clean,'--and the mind takes sweetly the grace and the command together, 'That he who loveth God love his brother also.'--Only the preparation of the gospel of peace can make our feet go softly over the roughness of the way."
Fleda did not move, unless her twinkling eyelashes might seem to contradict that.
"I need not tell you," Mr. Carleton went on a little lower, "where this medicine is to be sought."