“Now she’s going to flare up again,” he thought, as his companion turned and glared at him, but the anger faded out of her eyes as he looked at her in calm expectancy.
“It is a just rebuke,” she said, in a low voice. “I will tell you, although I do not care to speak of myself, but it will be a good punishment for me, as you say. My godmother, with whom I have always lived until lately, used to encourage me to self-denial when I was a child, saying that one could never rise to the height of a great renunciation unless one trained oneself for it by means of constant smaller ones. As I grew older, the principle seemed to me so excellent that I have followed it in other things.—When you were little, did you never hold your hand in the flame of the candle to try and find out whether you could be a martyr?”
“No,” said Caerleon; “I have often done it, but I am afraid it was because I was told not to.”
“Well, I have done it—often. And so with other things. I discovered in myself a strong tendency to insincerity, and fearing to yield to it, I made it a duty never to let politeness or the desire to please keep me from saying what I thought. How dreadful it would be to fail in truthfulness at some great crisis on account of a long course of petty hypocrisies! But I found that this made me appear rude, and I am very proud, and did not like to confess myself in the wrong. So here was another opportunity for self-discipline, and I resolved to let nothing prevent me from instantly asking pardon of any one I had offended in this way.”
“I see—without regard to that person’s feelings. And may I ask whether Madame—your godmother—pursues the same system?”
“My godmother is Princess Soudaroff. No; she does not need it, she is too good. Her life is given up to working among the poor. Her house is an asylum for the wretched. She loves every one, is kind to every one.”
“And she has impressed her views upon you, has she? Did I understand you to say that she brought you up?”
“Yes; she pitied the life I led with my parents, and she adopted me as her own. She gave me everything I could need, and provided excellent teachers for me; but, best of all, she allowed me to help her in her work. Sometimes we lived at her country house, and worked among the peasants, and sometimes in Pavelsburg, and then our work lay among the poorest of the poor. Oh, what a life it was! She cares for body and soul alike. The hospitals and prisons are visited, Bible-classes, sewing-classes held; drunkards reached, young girls away from home befriended and taken care of. To be in trouble or in loneliness—that gives you claim enough upon my Princess.”
“I didn’t know that you went in for all this kind of thing in Scythia,” said Caerleon. “It’s not quite one’s idea of the Greek Church, somehow.”
“But we are Evangelicals; we are separated,” said the girl, eagerly. “They say we are heretics,—Non-conformists, I think you call it in England,—and they persecute us. My godmother has often been in danger of exile, but something has always happened to save her. She has no fear at all.”