“Why not?” asked Morgan. He was very rarely sharp in speech, but he saw Nan’s discomfort.
“Why not, indeed? you and Nan are much of an age,” Silas replied. They considered him wonderingly; was he well-intentioned or infinitely malign? As they considered him he got up and went towards the stairs. “Back in a moment,” he said. They heard his tread upon the steps, then moving overhead. They looked at one another.
“Why did you say that about the donkey?” Nan asked.
“You think, like me, that Silas did it,” he answered, as a statement. “Don’t look so frightened,” he went on, his eyes softening into his ready smile; “I assure you, you need never be frightened of Silas. There’s no muscle in his violence. Nothing will ever come of it—beyond maiming donkeys. Oh yes, it’s horrible, I know, because it’s so futile. No, don’t shake your head—your pretty head,” he added inaudibly. An impulse came over him to cry “You tiny thing! you slip of fragility!” but he repressed it.
She uttered the most treacherous remark she had ever breathed about Silas, something which fringed the frightful truth, “I know better,” then terrified of her indiscretion, added, “Oh no, I mean nothing.”
“You are afraid of him, aren’t you?” he said, coming round the table closer to her, his attitude very sympathetic and protective, and differing by a shade from Calthorpe’s attitude. “You must not be that. One can only be sorry for Silas, who has grown warped and crooked, and who talks because there is nothing else he can do. Whenever I think of Silas, I feel so lucky in mind and body.”
She glanced at him gratefully. He had had the tact not to urge an explanation of her injudicious remark, and she knew that she could always depend upon this gentle tact; moreover, he had rescued her soul from the terror she so dreaded, and had by his words set Silas in a sane and pitiful light. It suited her temperament to have Silas drawn down from the uncomfortable heights where he seemed to dwell in perpetual strife with elements. It was no longer Silas who brooded over them, but they who endured and even loved Silas with widened charity. She was very grateful to Linnet for this. What he had done once he could do again; he could soothe her terrors. She had not yet thought of him in so human, companionable a way.
He continued the line that he had taken up, giving her time to command herself fully, making no demands upon her and pretending that nothing had been amiss. He swung himself on to the table, and talked easily,—
“I feel so lucky and thankful for having whole limbs and a sane mind. I don’t covet genius, but I do covet sanity; in fact, I’m not sure that the broadest genius isn’t the supreme sanity. Balance and justice! I think those two things are magnificent and grand,” (but he himself, she knew, would in practice always be merciful rather than just).
“I wish I had your book-learning,” she said; “you ought to stick to books.”