Both Helen and Uncle Peabody were listening to the old man’s words with breathless attention.
“You mean that Mrs. Armstrong is a natural humanist?” Uncle Peabody queried.
“The most perfect expression of all that humanism contains which I can ever hope to see,” Cerini replied, with feeling. “I, more than any one, have prevented the expression of these attributes which are your natural heritage; now let me help to merge them with your husband’s undoubted talents.”
“You cannot mean it,” Helen said, weakly, sobering down after the first exhilaration of the old man’s words. “I am no humanist, either natural or otherwise. Monsignor Cerini evidently means to give me a new confidence, but it is a mistaken kindness.”
“You must listen to what he says, Helen,” Uncle Peabody insisted. “I have known Cerini for many years, and he would make no such statement unless he felt it to be true.”
“It is all as unknown to me as some foreign language I have never heard before,” she protested. “I know, for I have tried to understand.”
“Does a bird have to know the technique of music before it can sing?” asked Cerini, quietly.
“Oh, this is agony for me!” cried Helen, in despair. “I can only see in it another opening of the wound, another barb later to be torn from my heart.”
“Be reasonable, child,” urged Uncle Peabody, soothingly. “It seems to me that instead of all this Cerini has brought to you—to all of us—the solution of our problem. Let me ask him a few questions, while you control yourself and try to understand.”
Helen acquiesced silently. Cerini’s words had seemed to give her hope, yet she dared not allow herself to hope again. Limp from exhaustion, worn out by her ceaseless mental struggle, she had no strength even to oppose.