“Mr. Schöninger!”
“I beg your pardon!” he exclaimed, recollecting that he had never called her by her Christian name before. “I was thinking, and I forgot.”
She walked soberly by his side without asking what the subject of his thoughts had been. His exclamation may have revealed to her something of their nature; but she was far from suspecting that she was engaged, still less that her marriage-day was fixed. She had, indeed, no reason to suppose that Mr. Schöninger had any intention of renewing the suit that she had once rejected.
“You are willing to take a walk?” he asked, and, when she nodded assent, added:
“Let us go up the Cocheco. Last night's frost has added the finishing touch to the trees, and everybody is admiring them.”
A beautiful road, almost as wild as a country lane, led between the river-bank and the flowery cliffs beside it, and here at evening all the youths and maidens, and many of their elders in whom age had not chilled the love of nature, used to walk soberly in the soundless path, or climb the cliffs, or sit [pg 686] on the mossy rocks, or venture out on the rocks that studded the stream. Not a pleasant evening but found people strolling through this romantic avenue.
“Nowhere but in New England does nature dazzle, I think,” Mr. Schöninger said. “See this maple-leaf! It is a fine scarlet, and as glossy as a gem, even when examined closely. And the elm-leaf is as fine a gold. Everywhere else the autumn foliage is dingy when looked at so closely. The sky, too. Look at those long lines of fire that are beginning to stretch overhead, and at the gathering crimsons! In half an hour the heavens will be as brilliant as the earth. In Italy the colors are soft, like the colors in an old painting; they have great depth and richness, but they lack the fresh brilliancy of the skies in the New World. You must go to Italy soon, Honora.”
This time the name was used without an apology.
“I have been thinking of it,” she replied quietly, and began to feel as a stranded seaweed may when, after having lain awhile painfully on the dry sand, it finds the bright sea slipping under it, and lifting it from its hard resting-place. Without a word of explanation she found herself claimed and cared for.
“I wish to go there again as a Catholic,” he continued, “and see with the eyes of faith what I saw before with the eyes of an artist. I shall always admire most the Catholicism of America, or what the Catholicism of America is going to be. It is more intelligent, noble, and reverent. It isn't a sort of devotion that expresses itself in tawdry paper flowers. Indeed, I believe that America is destined to show the world a Catholicism morally more grand than any it has yet seen—a worship of the heart and the intellect, where children shall be delighted, and yet common sense find nothing to regret. Still, Rome is the sacred city of the martyrs, the popes, and the temples. I think we should go there in two years at latest.”