He laid his big, ill-jointed hand on her knee.
"I thought," he said.—great drops of sweat coming out on his sallow lips,—"God meant you to help me. There is my life, little girl. You may do what you will with it. It does not value much to me."
And Grey, woman-like, gathered up the despised hand and life, and sobbed a little as she pressed them to her heart. An hour after, they went together up the old porch-steps, halting a moment where the grape-vines clustered thickest about the shingled wall. The house was silent; even the village slept in the moonlight: no sound of life in the great sweep of dusky hill and valley, save the wreaths of mist over the watercourses, foaming and drifting together silently: before morning they would stretch from base to base of the hills like a Dead Sea, ashy and motionless. They stood silent a moment, until the chirp of some robin, frightened by their steps in its nest overhead, had hummed drowsily down into sleep.
"It is not good-night, but good-bye, that I must bid you, Grey," he said, stooping to see her face.
"I know. But you will come again. God tells me that."
"I will come. Remember, Grey, I am going to save life, not to take it. Corrupt as I am, my hands are clean of this butchery for the sake of interest."
Grey's eyes wandered. She knows nothing about the war, to be candid: only that it is like a cold pain at her heart, day and night,—sorry that the slaves are slaves, wondering if they could be worse off than the free negroes swarming in the back-alleys yonder,—as sorry, being unpatriotic, for the homeless women in Virginia as for the stolen horses of Chambersburg. Grey's principles, though mixed, are sound, as far as they go, you see. Just then thinking only of herself.
"You will come back to me?" clinging to his arm.
"Why, I must come back," cheerfully, choking back whatever stopped his breath, pushing back the curling hair from her forehead with a half-reverential touch. "I have so much, to do, little girl! There is a farm over yonder I mean to earn enough to buy, where you and I shall rest and study and grow,—stronger and healthier, more helpful every day. We'll find our work and place in the world yet, poor child! You shall show me what a pure, earnest life is, Grey, and above us—what there is there," lowering his voice. "And I,—how much I have to do with this bit of humanity here on my hands!"—playfully. "An unhewn stone, with the beautiful statue lying perdu within. Bid you know you were that, Grey? and I the sculptor?"
She looked up bewildered.