Many a night he had climbed to his fourth-story room, humming a cheery song, while his heart was being gnawed in holes by the monster Jealousy, all because Miss Hill was chatting and laughing in the parlor with some of the other moths who circled about her. When chaffed about his ill-requited devotion, he laughed it off, and said he was happy to be tolerated at all. To himself, as a matter of graveyard whistling, he said: “It is a question of waiting. She cares for none of them. When she tires of them she may think of me. Meanwhile I think of her because I can’t help it.”
He kept this up for four years. Then a restlessness of spirit came upon him; the unseen forces of destiny began to work upon his mind and urge him to go forth, he knew not where. Yet how could he go out of the sight of her, voluntarily? There was but one thing that would give him the required courage, and that was to make her bid him go. Then he could feel that, at least, he was obeying her, hence his little plan of having her cast the die. It might comfort him in the future.
The four years of their life together under the same roof rolled through Kendall’s mind in panorama, and filled his heart to bursting. The daily sight of the girl beside him had sweetened the days—had been life itself to him, for she radiated light and life, like a sun. That she did not love him, mattered little in that moment. The years in which he had lived in her presence could not be taken from him. Remembering this his spirit was lifted up, and the poor, common, selfish ambition to possess her vanished, and the joy of having known and loved her took its place.
He looked at her long, earnestly, adoringly, photographing her on the fadeless walls of memory that he might carry the picture with him through all the years to come.
“I want to make a confession to you, Miss Hill,” said Kendall, when he thought the mental photograph of her was complete. “You have converted me to broader views, not by words, but by your daily life. I see you filling a useful place, unaided, in a profession that only men, heretofore, to my knowledge, have attempted. You not only succeed, but you excel most of your male co-workers. You make as much money as any of them, and you have more brains, and you command everybody’s respect. Thinking over these things, I am ashamed to remember that I thought I ought to vote, but women must be kept from it at all hazards. Your example has enlightened me by taking some of the masculine conceit out of me. I feel small and mean that I in my insignificance should have thrown a straw in the path of women like you.”
“I am glad your mental horizon has widened,” she said. “It will be a pleasure to think of you as one of my converts. I may never make another, unless, as in this case, it be done by example and not argument. I begin to believe that discussion availeth little. When I hear poor, undeveloped beings fighting the ideas that would make them free, I do nothing to convert them to my way of thinking, I just silently say, ‘May God enlighten them,’ for that’s all that can be done, and the enlightening process is usually slow.”
“I remember now,” he said, “that I haven’t been able to draw you into a discussion in many a day. I suppose you saw it was a hopeless case and just simply prayed for my enlightenment.”
“Yes; and it has come sooner than I expected. So now I am more than ever persuaded that argument is useless. None can be taught until ready to learn. ‘Except ye become as little children’—receptive, teachable, ready for light—applies to entering all kingdoms as well as the heavenly one.”
“While I am confessing,” said Kendall, “I will tell you that I used sometimes to take sides against you for the pleasure of hearing you express yourself—you do it so well.”
She looked at him and her eyes made him ashamed, as she said: “That was not kind. I was always in earnest. However, I am learning a little more about human nature every day. I shall soon cease to be a Galatea, I think.”