Assunta tried to be calm, as she said gently, while she breathed a silent prayer for guidance:
“You must think of me as almost a sister.”
Mr. Percival went on:
“Even your image, true and beautiful and holy as it is, and pure as an angel's, should never have been allowed to come between me and the God to whose special service I was inclined. But believe me, Miss Howard, never for one moment have I cherished a hope that you might be to me other than you are; only, when I have striven to rise above all human feeling, and to give myself unreservedly to him who demanded the sacrifice, God help me! you seemed to fill his place in my soul. Forgive me and pity me! I am miserably weak.”
After a moment he continued:
“Ah! Miss Howard, you know what I mean. It is only because of my own weakness that I have found the memory of you an obstacle to my advance towards the perfection to which I aspired.”
“And to which you will still aspire.” And Assunta's voice was low and sweet, as she for the first time broke silence. “I had not dreamed of this, Mr. Percival, but I hope you will never have occasion to regret the confidence you have reposed, not in the ideal which has for a moment passed as a cloud of temptation between your soul and its high calling, but in one who, though full of faults, may yet offer you her sympathy and her prayers.”
“God bless you!” escaped from Mr. Percival's lips.
“I am too young and inexperienced,” continued Assunta, “to give you counsel; besides, I am a woman; but, with my woman's intuition, I think I see how all this [pg 477] has come about.... May I go on?”
“I beg you will; it is the sort of soul-wound that needs probing.”