"I'll read and you will listen," I answered. "That is the usual arrangement, is it not?"
"I will not listen;" she replied, and I saw by the angry flush mantling her forehead that I had committed a grave error; that she misunderstood my motives and was vexed.
"Pardon me," I said. "We will not read it, if you so desire; but at the same time there can be no harm in informing one's self on opposite views from our own. This is the spirit in which I should read the book, not fearing that it would bias my mind either one way or the other. Can you not be as liberal?"
She left her seat and began fingering in a nervous way the ornaments that lay upon the mantel.
"I have no wish to hear my God and my religion railed and blasphemed at either at first or second hand," she said. "It would be none the less painful coming from the lips of one whom I had almost learned to call friend; but who has to-night in a very few words shown me my mistake. For my religion I have long been aware that you cherish an undisguised contempt; for myself I had hoped you entertained no contemptuous feeling. Surely, I have never given you reason for your action of this evening."
While she was speaking I had shaped my course. Precipitate as it might be, there was nothing left me now but a declaration of my real sentiments, unless I would forfeit her esteem for ever. Fully conscious of the disadvantages of time and circumstance as I was, and without any presumption of success, I then and there resolved to tell her the whole truth. It was but a hastening to the end.
"Stop one moment," I replied; "a word with you. You have wronged me by intimating that I purposed aught of disrespect to you or your religion by what I have unthinkingly done this evening. I could do neither; for I love you. How deeply, I, who have struggled with that love for months, alone can know; how entirely and unselfishly, you perhaps might learn, could you find it in your heart to let me show you; how vainly, my own heart tells me while I watch your face. Surprised you may be—I have no doubt you are; displeased too, but I take no blame to myself for that. An honest man dares lift his eyes to a noble woman; and whatever be my faults, and they are many; wherever lie my errors, and they are thickly sown, I still can call myself an honest man."
She moved further away from where I stood, and once or twice, while I was speaking, made a movement as though to interrupt me. As I uttered the last words, I saw her eyes flash, and a half sarcastic smile wreathe itself about her lips.
"You call yourself an honest man," she said; "an honest man! What is your code, and who the lawgiver? Is it honest to leave untilled and brier-strewn the soil that has been given you in trust for an endless harvest-time; to waste the talents that have been bestowed on you with lavish hand; to spend days and months and years in pleasant idleness, as you have done, and as you do? Is it honest to wrap yourself in a mantle of false and hollow cynicism, lest your better nature might have opportunity to assert its capacities and prove its possibilities; to scoff at all creeds and professions of religion as so many shams and superstitions, because from the nature of the life you lead your own ideal must be both hypocrisy and sham? I am only a woman, and such men as you place but little confidence in a woman's judgment and far-sightedness. But I have read you deeper than you suppose. Evening after evening, while you sat here reading, talking to me, I have been studying you. I have recognized emotions that your pride would call weaknesses; thoughts that your worldly wisdom seeks to cover with a jest or smile; great capabilities of sacrifice that your every-day exterior conceals under dilettante tastes and careless ways. I have seen that in your eye, heard that in your voice, which has made me marvel how a soul like yours could be content with husks and bitterness. For you, yourself, I could have sympathy; but I scorn the evil spirit that is in you."
I had loved her before; but as she stood there taxing me with that to the consciousness of which I was but just awakening, my love gave one great bound and seemed to sit enthroned high above sight or sound of human passion, even while, with every word she uttered, the knowledge of its vain endeavor fastened itself more firmly upon me. I was about to speak, but she interrupted me, and the words came more slowly now, and more kindly.