Part 14 (1/2)
”He is a bad man! He has spoken ill of you! He has already a wife!”
”I am glad of it. I can obey my instincts now, and see him no more.
Personally he is distasteful to me! I had an idea he was honest! It is nothing!”
She dismissed the subject with a wave of the hand. To her it was altogether a minor matter. Then she looked at him.
”Well!”
”You never answered my letter.”
”No, there was no answer. I came back.”
”You did not let me know.”
”You will find a message at your rooms when you get back.”
He walked up and down the room. He knew at once that all he had done hitherto had been in vain. The battle was still before him. She sat and watched him with an inscrutable smile. Once as he pa.s.sed her, she laid her hand upon his arm. He stopped at once.
”Your white flower was born to die and to wither,” she said. ”A night's frost would have killed it as surely as the lowland air. It is like these violets.” She took a bunch from her bosom. ”This morning they were fresh and beautiful. Now they are crushed and faded! Yet they have lived their life.”
She threw them down upon the floor.
”Do you think a woman is like that?” she said softly. ”You are very, very ignorant! She has a soul.”
He held out his hand.
”A soul to keep white and pure. A soul to give back--to G.o.d!”
Again she smiled at him slowly, and shook her dark head. ”You are like a child in some things! You have lived so long amongst the dry bones of scholars.h.i.+p, that you have lost your touch upon humanity. And of us women, you know--so very little. You have tried to understand us from books. How foolis.h.!.+ You must be my disciple, and I will teach you.”
”It is not teaching,” he cried; ”it is temptation.”
She turned upon him with a gleam of pa.s.sion in her eyes.
”Temptation!” she cried. ”There spoke the whole selfishness of the philosopher, the dilettante in morals! What is it that you fear? It is the besmirchment of your own ideals, your own little code framed and moulded with your own hands. What do you know of sin or of purity, you, who have held yourself aloof from the world with a sort of delicate care, as though you, forsooth, were too precious a thing to be soiled with the dust of human pa.s.sion and human love! That is where you are all wrong. That is where you make your great mistake. You have judged without experience. You speak of a soul which may be stained with sin; you have no more knowledge than the Pharisees of old what const.i.tutes sin. Love can never stain anything! Love that is constant and true and pure is above the marriage laws of men; it is above your little self-constructed ideals; it is a thing of Heaven and of G.o.d! You wrote to me like a child,--and you are a child, for until you have learnt what love is, you are without understanding.”
Suddenly her outstretched hands dropped to her side. Her voice became soft and low; her dark eyes were dimmed.
”Come to me, and you shall know. I will show you in what narrow paths you have been wandering. I will show you how beautiful a woman's love can make your life!”
”If we can love and be pure,” he said hoa.r.s.ely, ”what is sin? What is that?”
He was standing by the window, and he pointed westwards with shaking finger. The roar of Piccadilly and Regent Street came faintly into the little room. She understood him.
”You have a great deal to learn, dear,” she whispered softly.
”Remember this first, and before all, Love can sanctify everything.”
”But they too loved in the beginning!”
She shook her head.