“But consider the influences he is under!” Inez urged.
Uncle Peabody admired the girl’s handling of the catechising he had given her. He looked steadily into her face before replying.
“You are a noble champion, Miss Thayer,” he said, at length.
“That is because I have faith in the cause,” responded Inez, smiling. “I have been brought up to believe that every married woman must at some time in her life make a supreme sacrifice for her husband. I only hope that when my turn comes the sacrifice may be made for so good a cause.”
“This is another version of the chastening of the spirit,” added Uncle Peabody; “but I am thinking of a certain spirit which received so much chastening that it never revived. I sincerely trust that history may not repeat itself.”
XIV
Uncle Peabody was entirely right when he stated that Armstrong had become a changed man since he first came to Florence; Miss Thayer was right when she attributed this change to the associations into which he had thrown himself—yet both were wrong in thinking him unconscious of his own altered condition. As he told Helen, he had ever felt some irresistible influence drawing him back to Florence, even while engrossed in the duties of his profession. Just what the craving was he could not have explained even to himself. What he should find in Florence had taken no definite form in his mind, yet the longing possessed him in spite of all he could do to reason with himself against it.
After his arrival in Florence, even, it was not until Cerini suggested the Michelangelo letters that he formulated any plan to gratify his long-anticipated expectations. His arguments with himself had prepared him for a disappointment. It had been a boyish fancy, he said, inwardly; he had felt the influences of his environment simply because he had been young and impressionable, and it was quite impossible that he should now, man-grown, prove susceptible to anything so inexplicable as what he had felt in his earlier days.