Mr. Howard glanced at her. “You do not love him?” he asked.
“No,” said Helen, quickly. “If I had loved him, I could never have had a thought of all these other things. But I had no wish to love anybody; it was more of my selfishness.”
“Perhaps not,” the other replied gently. “Some day you may come to love him, Miss Davis.”
“I do not know,” Helen said. “Arthur was very impatient.”
“When a man is swift and eager in all his life,” said Mr. Howard, smiling, “he cannot well be otherwise in his love. Such devotion ought to be very precious to a woman, for such hearts are not easy to find in the world.”
Helen had turned and was gazing anxiously at Mr. Howard as he spoke to her thus. “You really think,” she said, “that I should learn to appreciate Arthur's love?”
“I cannot know much about him from the little you have told me,” was the other's answer. “But it seems to me that it is there you might find the best chance to become the unselfish woman that you wish to be.”
“It is very strange,” the girl responded, wonderingly, “how differently you think about it. I should have supposed I was acting very unwisely indeed if I loved Arthur; everyone would have told me of his poverty and obscurity, and of how I must give up my social career.”
“I think differently, perhaps,” Mr. Howard said, “because I have lived so much alone. I have come to know that happiness is a thing of one's own heart, and not of externals; the questions I should ask about a marriage would not be of wealth and position. If you really wish to seek the precious things of the soul, I should think you would be very glad to prove it by some sacrifice; and I know that two hearts are brought closer, and all the memories of life made dearer, by some such trial in the early days. People sneer at love in a cottage, but I am sure that love that could wish to live anywhere else is not love. And as to the social career, a person who has once come to know the life of the heart soon ceases to care for any kind of life that is heartless; a social career is certainly that, and in comparison very vulgar indeed.”
Helen looked a little puzzled, and repeated the word “vulgar” inquiringly. Mr Howard smiled.