"No," I said, and I think it was a wise answer; at any rate it seemed to please him; "nobody could do that. Time alone can justify my action even to myself. I am going to be on the lookout for the proof daily."
He smiled again. "You know what would have been said if a man had done this?" he said deliberately; "it would be asked, Who is the woman?"
I blushed furiously, and hated myself for it, though he was nearly old enough to have been my grandfather. "I always feel glad that Eve did not blame the other sex," I replied, "and, in spite of the annoying colour in my face, I can say with a clear conscience that there is no man in the case at all."
"Do not be grieved with me," he said, just as calmly as ever. "I realised that I was taking a big risk, but I wished to clear the ground at the outset. I have done so, but I hesitate to venture further."
His tone was so very kindly that I, too, determined to take a big risk, though I half feared he would not understand, or understanding would be amused. So I told him something of my life in London, and how its problems had perplexed and depressed me, and I told him of the heather and how it had called me; and I think something of the passion of life shook my voice as I spoke, and I expressed more than I had realised myself until then.
He listened with grave and fixed attention, and did not reply at once. Then, halting again in his walk, though only for a second, he said:
"Miss Holden, subconscious influences have been at work upon you for some time past. You have experienced the loneliness which is never so hard to bear as when one is jostled by the crowd. I gather that the wickedness of London—its injustice and inequalities—have been weighing upon your spirits, and you feel for the moment like some escaped bird which has gained the freedom of the woods after beating its wings for many weary months against the bars of its city cage. You may have done well to escape, but beware of false ideals, and beware of the inevitable reaction when you discover the wickedness of the village, and learn that injustice and vice and slander, and a hundred other hateful things, are not peculiar to city life."
"But surely," I Interposed, "the overcrowding, and the sweating and the awful, awful wretchedness of the poor are wanting here."
"My dear young lady," he said, "I suppose you think that the devil is a city gentleman whose attention is so much occupied with great concerns that he has had no time to discover so insignificant a place as Windyridge. You will find out your mistake. There are times when he is very active here, but he has wit enough to vary his methods as occasion requires.
"Sometimes, as Scripture and experience have shown you, he goes about as a roaring lion, and there is no mistaking his presence; but at other times he masquerades as an angel of light. You speak of the evils you know, and it may be admitted that most of these are absent from Windyridge, at any rate in their aggravated forms. But analyse these various evils which have caused you to chafe against your environment, and you will find that selfishness is at the root of them all, and selfishness flourishes even in the soil which breeds the moorland heather.