"Your logic is very dispiriting," said I, watching her with increasing admiration. "It would leave life nerveless, and make death its only aspiration."
"Do you think life ends in death?"
"The life of the flesh, certainly."
"The flesh has nothing to do with life. It is the spirit that lives. My flesh might have been dead last night when you saw me: for I heard and felt nothing. No! it was all as blank to me as my sight when I shut my eyes so;" she closed her eyes like a child would have done. "I might have been dead, and to myself was as dead as ever I shall be when I am in the grave."
I was about to speak, when she suddenly said, "Mr. Thorburn, you are making a long call."
"I must plead you as my excuse," I answered, rising, hardly knowing whether to look grave or smile, so bewildered was I by her manners and conversation: her brusquerie, of which her beauty qualified the rudeness; her severity, tempered by a childishness which made all her moods but new points of view of her charms.
I took my hat: she opened the door.
"I hope, Mrs. Fraser," said I, "that you will not deny me the pleasure of meeting you again?"
"I have not come to Cliffegate for society, Mr. Thorburn."
"Nor I. But a single individual does not make society. Besides, would not my having met you twice under circumstances so uncommon justify my claiming a privilege to which no one else in this place could pretend?"