“I cannot indorse the sentiment, precisely in those words,”
Woodbury answered. “I esteem both affection and intellect
in woman, but the first quality must be predominant. Its absence
in man may now and then be tolerated, but to woman it
is indispensable.”

“Might not woman make the same requirement of man?”
Hannah Thurston suddenly asked.

“Certainly,” he answered, “and with full justice. That is
one point wherein no one can dispute the equal rights of the
sexes. But the capacity to love is a natural quality, and there
is no true affection where the parties are continually measuring
their feelings to see which loves the most. Bute and his wife
will be perfectly happy so long as they are satisfied with the
simple knowledge of giving and receiving.”

“That's exactly my idea!” cried Mrs. Waldo, in great
delight. “Husband, do you recollect the promises we made
to each other on our wedding-day? There's never a wedding
happens but I live it all over again. We wore Navarino bonnets
then, and sleeves puffed out with bags of down, and you
would lay your head on one of them, as we drove along, just
like Bute and Carrie to-day, on our way to Father Waldo's.
I said then that I'd never doubt you, never take back an atom
of my trust in you—and I've kept my word from that day to
this, and I'll keep it in this world and the next!”

Here Mrs. Waldo actually burst into tears, but smiled
through them, like the sudden rush of a stream from which
spray and rainbow are born at the same instant. “I am a
silly old creature,” she said: “don't mind me. Half of my
heart has been in Carrie's breast all morning, and I knew I
should make a fool of myself before the day was out.”

“You're a good wife,” said Mr. Waldo, patting her on the
head as if she had been a little girl.

Hannah Thurston rose, with a wild, desperate feeling in her
heart. A pitiless hand seemed to clutch and crush it in her
bosom. So, she thought, some half-drowned sailor, floating
on the plank of a wreck, must feel when the sail that promised

[figure description] Page 346.[end figure description]

him deliverance, tacks with the wind and slides out of his
horizon. The waves of life, which had hitherto only stirred
for her with the grand tidal pulse which moves in their depths,
now heaved threateningly and dashed their bitter salt in her
face at every turn. Whence came these ominous disturbances?
What was there in the happy marriage of two
ignorant and contented souls, to impress her with such vague,
intolerable foreboding? With the consciousness of her inability
to suppress it came a feeling of angry shame at the
deceitfulness of her own strength. But perhaps—and this
was a gleam of hope—what she experienced was the disappointed
protest of an instinct common to every human being,
and which must therefore be felt and conquered by others
as well.

She stole a glance at Woodbury. His face was abstracted
but it expressed no signs of a struggle akin to her own. The
large brown eyes were veiled with the softness of a tender,
subdued longing; the full, regular lips, usually closed with all
the firmness and decision of his character in their line of
junction, were slightly parted, and the corners drooped with
an expression unutterably sad. Even over cheeks and brow,
a soft, warm breath seemed to have blown. He appeared to
her, suddenly, under a new aspect. She saw the misty shadow
which the passion of a man's heart casts before it, and turned
away her eyes in dread of a deeper revelation.

As she took leave of the Waldos, he also rose and gave her
his hand. The tender cloud of sadness had not entirely passed
from his face, and she avoided meeting his gaze. Whether it
was the memory of a lost, or the yearning for an absent love,
which had thus betrayed itself, she felt that it gave him the
temporary power to discern something of the emotion which
had mastered her. Had he done so, she never could have
met him again. To this man, of all men, she would continue
to assert her equality. Whatever weaknesses others might
discover, he at least should only know her in her strength.

The rest of the day passed rather tamely to Woodbury, and

[figure description] Page 347.[end figure description]

as he rode down the valley during the sweet and solemn
coming-on of the twilight, he was conscious of a sensation
which he had not experienced since the days of his early trials
in New York. He well remembered the melancholy Sabbath
evenings, when he walked along the deserted North River
piers, watching the purple hills of Staten Island deepen into
gray as the sunset faded—when all that he saw, the quiet
vessels, the cold bosom of the bay, the dull red houses on the
shores and even the dusky heaven overhead, was hollow and
unreal—when there was no joy in the Present and no promise
in the Future. The same hopeless chill came over him now.
All the life had gone out of the landscape; its colors were
cold and raw, the balmy tonic odor of the golden-rods and
meadow marigolds seemed only designed to conceal some
rank odor of decay, and the white front of Lakeside greeted
him with the threat of a prison rather than the welcome of a
home.

On the evening of the second day Bute returned, as delighted
to get back as if he had made a long journey. The
light of his new life still lay upon him and gave its human
transfiguration to his face. Woodbury studied the change, unconsciously
to its subject, with a curiosity which he had never
before acknowledged in similar cases. He saw the man's supreme
content in the healthy clearness of his eye, in the light,
elastic movement of his limbs, and in the lively satisfaction with
which he projected plans of labor, in which he was to perform
the principal part. He had taken a fresh interest in life, and
was all courage and activity. In Carrie, on the other hand,
the trustful reliance she had exhibited appeared now to have
assumed the form of a willing and happy submission. She
recognized the ascendency of sex, in her husband, without
being able to discern its nature. Thus Bute's plain common-sense
suddenly took the form of rough native intellect in her
eyes, and confessing (to herself, only) her own deficiency,
her affection was supported by the pride of her respect. Her
old aunt had whispered to her, before they left Tiberius:

[figure description] Page 348.[end figure description]

“Carrline, you're a lucky gal. Y'r husband's a proper nice
man as ever I see, and so well set-up, too. You'll both be
well to do, afore you die, if you take keer o' what you've got,
and lay up what it brings in. I shouldn't wonder if you was
able to send your boys to Collidge.”

This suggestion opened a new field for her ambition. The
thought seemed still a scarcely permitted liberty, and she did
not dare to look at her face in the glass when it passed
through her mind; but the mother's instinct, which lnrks, unsuspected,
in every maiden's breast, boldly asserted its existence
to the young wife, and she began to dream of the
future reformers or legislators whom it might be her fortunate
lot to cradle. Her nature, as we have already more
than once explained, was so shallow that it could not contain
more than one set of ideas at a time. The acquired affectations
by which she had hitherto been swayed, being driven
from the field, her new faith in Bute possessed her wholly,
and she became natural by the easiest transition in the world.
Characters like hers rarely have justice done to them. Generally,
they are passed over as too trivial for serious inspection:
their follies and vanities are so evident and transparent,
that the petit verre is supposed to be empty, when at the
bottom may lie as potent a drop of the honey of human love,
as one can find in a whole huge ox-horn of mead.

Now began for Woodbury a life very different from what
he had anticipated. Bute took possession of his old stewardship
with the joyous alacrity of a man doubly restored to the
world, and Mrs. Carrie Wilson fidgeted about from morning
until night, fearful lest some neglected duty in her department
might be seen. The careful respect which Woodbury exercised
towards her gave her both courage and content in her
new position, while it preserved a certain distance between
them. She soon learned, not only to understand but to share
Bute's exalted opinion of his master. In this respect, Woodbury's
natural tact was unerring. Without their knowledge,
he guided those who lived about him to the exact places,

[figure description] Page 349.[end figure description]

which he desired them to fill. In any European household
such matters would have settled themselves without trouble;
but in America, where the vote of the hired neutralizes that
of the hirer, and both have an equal chance of reaching the
Presidential chair—where the cook and chambermaid may
happen to wear more costly bonnets than their mistress, and
to have a livelier interest in the current fashions, it requires
no little skill to harmonize the opposite features of absolute
equality and actual subjection. Too great a familiarity, according
to the old proverb, breeds contempt; too strict an
assertion o the relative positions, breeds rebellion.

The man of true cultivation, who may fraternize at will
with the humblest and rudest of the human race, reserves,
nevertheless, the liberty of selecting his domestic associates.
Woodbury insisted on retaining his independence to this extent,
not from an assumption of superiority, but from a resistance
to the dictation of the uncultivated in every thing that
concerned his habits of life. He would not have hesitated to
partake of a meal in old Melinda's cottage, but it was always
a repugnant sensation to him, on visiting the Merryfields,
when an Irish laborer from the field came in his shirt-sleeves,
or a strapping mulatto woman, sweating from the kitchen fire,
to take their places at the tea-table. Bute's position was
above that of a common laborer, and Woodbury, whose long
Indian life had not accustomed him to prefer lonely to social
meals, was glad to have the company of his wedded assistants
at breakfast and dinner, and this became the ordinary habit;
but he was careful to preserve a margin sufficient for his own
freedom and convenience. Carrie, though making occasional
mistakes, brought so much good-will to the work, that the
housekeeping went on smoothly enough to a bachelor's eyes.
If Mrs. Blake's favorable judgment had reference to this aspect
of the case, she was sufficiently near the truth, but in another
respect she certainly made a great mistake.

It was some days before Woodbury would confess to himself
the disturbance which the new household, though so

[figure description] Page 350.[end figure description]

conveniently regulated, occasioned him. The sight of Bute's
clear morning face, the stealthy glance of delight with which
he followed the movements of his beaming little wife, as she
prepared the breakfast-table, the eager and absurd manœuvres
which she perpetrated to meet him for just one second (long
enough for the purpose), outside the kitchen-door as he returned
from the field—all these things singularly annoyed
Woodbury. The two were not openly demonstrative in their
nuptial content, but it was constantly around them like an
atmosphere. A thousand tokens, so minute that alone they
meant nothing, combined to express the eternal joy which
man possesses in woman, and woman in man. It pervaded
the mansion of Lakeside from top to bottom, like one of those
powerful scents which cling to the very walls and cannot be
washed out. When he endeavored to avoid seeing it or surmising
its existence, in one way, it presented itself to him in
another. When, as it sometimes happened, either of the
parties became conscious that he or she had betrayed a little
too much tenderness, the simulated indifference, the unnatural
gravity which followed, made the bright features of their new
world all the more painfully distinct by the visible wall which
it built up, temporarily, between him and them. He was
isolated in a way which left him no power of protest. They
were happy, and his human sympathy forbade him to resent it;
they were ignorant and uncultivated, in comparison to himself,
and his pride could give him no support; they were sincere,
and his own sincerity of character was called upon to recognize
it; their bond was sacred, and demanded his reverence.
Why, then, should he be disturbed by that which enlisted all
his better qualities, and peremptorily checked the exercise of
the opposite? Why, against all common-sense, all gentle instincts,
all recognition of the loftiest human duty, should he
in this new Paradise of Love, be the envious serpent rather
than the protecting angel?

The feeling was clearly there, whatever might be its explanation.
There were times when he sought to reason it away

[figure description] Page 351.[end figure description]

as the imaginary jealousy of a new landed proprietor, who
presents to himself the idea of ownership in every possible
form in order to enjoy it the more thoroughly. Lakeside
was his, to the smallest stone inside his boundary fence,
and the mossiest shingle on the barn-roof; but the old house—
the vital heart of the property—now belonged more to
others than to himself. The dead had signed away their interest
in its warmth and shelter, but it was haunted in every
chamber by the ghosts of the living. The new-made husband
and wife filled it with a feeling of home, in which he had no
part. They had usurped his right, and stolen the comfort
which ought to belong to him alone. It was their house, and
he the tenant. As he rode down the valley, in the evenings,
and from the bridge over Roaring Brook glanced across the
meadows to the sunny knoll, the love, which was not his own,
looked at him from the windows glimmering in the sunset and
seemed to say: “You would not ask me to be your guest, but
I am here in spite of you!”

Woodbury, however, though his nature was softened by the
charm of a healthy sentiment, was not usually imaginative. He
was not the man to endure, for any length of time, a mental or
moral unrest, without attempting to solve it. His natural powers
of perception, his correct instincts, his calm judgment, and
his acquired knowledge of life, enabled him to interpret himself
as well as others. He never shrank from any revelation
which his own heart might make to him. If a wound smarted,
he thrust the probe to the bottom with a steady hand. The
pain was none the less, afterwards, perhaps, but he could estimate
when it would heal. He possessed, moreover, the virtue,
so often mistaken for egotism, of revering in himself the aspirations,
the sacrifices, and the sanctities which he revered in
other men. Understanding, correctly, his nature as a man,
his perceptions were not easily confused. There are persons
whose moral nature is permanently unhinged by the least
license: there are others who may be led, by circumstance,
into far graver aberrations, and then swing back, without

[figure description] Page 352.[end figure description]

effort, to their former integrity. He belonged to the latter
class.

It was not long, therefore, before he had surveyed the whole
ground of his disturbance. Sitting, late into the night, in his
library, he would lay down his book beside the joss-stick,
which smouldered away into a rod of white ashes in its boat,
and quietly deliberate upon his position. He recalled every
sensation of annoyance or impatience, not disguising its injustice
or concealing from himself its inherent selfishness, while
on the other hand he admitted the powerful source from which
it sprang. He laid no particular blame to his nature, from the
fact that it obeyed a universal law, and deceived himself by no
promise of resistance. Half the distress of the race is caused
by their fighting battles which can never be decided. Woodbury's
knowledge simply taught him how to conceal his trouble,
and that was all he desired. He knew that the ghost which
had entered Lakeside must stay there until he should bring
another ghost to dislodge it.

Where was the sweet phantom to be found? If, in some
impatient moment, he almost envied Bute the possession of the
attached, confiding, insipid creature, in whom the former was
so unspeakably content, his good sense told him, the next,
that the mere capacity to love was not enough for the needs
of a life. That which is the consecration of marriage does not
alone constitute marriage. Of all the women whom he knew,
but one could offer him the true reciprocal gifts. Towards
her, he acknowledged himself to be drawn by an interest much
stronger than that of intellect—an interest which might grow,
if he allowed it, into love. The more he saw or learned of
this woman, the more admirably pure and noble his heart
acknowledged her to be. He had come to look upon her errors
with a gentle pity, which taught him to avoid assailing them,
whenever the assault might give her pain. Was the hard,
exacting manner in which she claimed delusive rights—not,
indeed, specially for herself, but for all her sex—the result of
her position as a champion of those rights, or was it an

[figure description] Page 353.[end figure description]

integral part of herself? This was the one important question
which it behooved him to solve. To what extent was the false
nature superimposed upon the true woman beneath it?

Supposing, even, that he should come to love her, and, improbable
as it might seem, should awaken an answering love
in her heart, would she unite her fate, unconditionally, to his?
Would she not demand, in advance, security for some unheardof
domestic liberty, as a partial compensation for the legal
rights which were still withheld? One of her fellow-championesses
had recently married, and had insisted on retaining her
maiden name. He had read, in the newspapers, a contract
drawn up and signed by the two, which had disgusted him by
its cold business character. He shuddered as the idea of
Hannah Thurston presenting a similar contract for his signature,
crossed his mind. “No!” he cried, starting up: “it is
incredible!” Nothing in all his intercourse with her suggested
such a suspicion. Even in the grave dignity of her
manner she was entirely woman. The occasional harshness
of judgment or strength of prejudice which repelled him, were
faults, indeed, but faults that would melt away in the light of
a better knowledge of herself. She was at present in a position
of fancied antagonism, perhaps not wholly by her own
action. The few men who agreed with her gave her false ideas
of their own sex: the others whom she knew misunderstood
and misrepresented her. She thus stood alone, bearing the
burden of aspirations, which, however extravagant, were splendidly
earnest and unselfish.

Mrs. Blake's words came back to Woodbury's memory and
awakened a vague confidence in his own hopes. She was too
clear-eyed a woman to be easily mistaken in regard to one of
her sex. Her bantering proposition might have been intended
to convey a serious counsel. “A strong woman can only be
overcome by superior strength.” But how should this strength
(supposing he possessed it) be exercised? Should he crush
her masculine claims under a weight of argument? Impossible:
if she were to be convinced at all, it must be by the

[figure description] Page 354.[end figure description]

knowledge that comes through love. There was another form
of strength, he thought—a conquering magnetism of presence,
a force of longing which supplants will, a warmth of passion
which disarms resistance—but such strength, again, is simply
Love, and he must love before he could exercise it. The question,
therefore, was at last narrowed to this: should he cherish
the interest he already felt until it grew to the passion he prefigured,
and leave to fate its return, free as became a woman
or fettered with suspicious provisions?

This, however, was a question not so easy to decide. Were
he sure of exciting a reciprocal interest, the venture, he felt,
would be justified to his own heart; but nothing in her manner
led him to suspect that she more than tolerated him—in
distinction to her former hostile attitude—and there is no man
of gentle nature but shrinks from the possibility of a failure.
“Ah,” said he, “I am not so young as I thought. A young
man would not stop to consider, and doubt, and weight probabilities.
If I fail, my secret is in sacred keeping; if I win, I
must win every thing. Am I not trying to keep up a youthful
faculty of self-illusion which is lost forever, by demanding an
ideal perfection in woman? No, no! I must cease to cheat
myself: I must not demand a warmer flame than I can give.”

Sometimes he attempted to thrust the subject from his
mind. The deliberations in which he had indulged seemed to
him cold, material, and unworthy the sanction of love. They
had the effect, however, of making Hannah Thurston's image
an abiding guest in his thoughts, and the very familiarity with
his own doubts rendered them less formidable than at first. A
life crowned with the bliss he passionately desired, might reward
the trial. If it failed, his future could not be more barren
and lonely than it now loomed before him: how barren,
how lonely, every sight of Bute's face constantly resuggested.

The end of it all was a determination to seek Hannah
Thurston's society—to court a friendly intimacy, in which he
should not allow his heart to be compromised. So far he
might go with safety to himself, and in no case, according to

[figure description] Page 355.[end figure description]

his views, could there be danger to her. His acquaintance
with the widow, which had been kept up by an occasional
brief visit, and the present condition of the latter's health, gave
him all the opportunity he needed. The Catawba grapes were
already ripening on the trellises at Lakeside, and he would
take the earliest bunches to the widow's cottage.

The impression, in Ptolemy society, of a strong antagonism
between himself and Hannah Thurston, was very general.
Even Mrs. Waldo, whose opportunities of seeing both were
best of all, fancied that their more cordial demeanor towards
each other, in their later interviews, was only a tacitly understood
armistice. Woodbury was aware of this impression, and
determined not to contradict it for the present.

Thus, tormented from without and within, impelled by an
outcry of his nature that would not be silenced, without consciousness
of love, he took the first step, knowing that it might
lead him to love a woman whose ideas were repugnant to all
his dreams of marriage and of domestic peace.

p713-361 CHAPTER XXVIII. IN WHICH HANNAH THURSTON, ALSO, HAS HER TROUBLES.

[figure description] Page 356.[end figure description]

When Woodbury made his first appearance at the cottage,
the Widow Thurston, who had not seen him since his return
from the Lakes, frankly expressed her pleasure in his society.
It was one of her favorable days, and she was sitting in her
well-cushioned rocking-chair, with her feet upon a stool. She
had grown frightfully thin and pale during the summer, but
the lines of physical pain had almost entirely passed away
from her face. Her expression denoted great weakness and
languor. The calm, resigned spirit which reigned in her eyes
was only troubled, at times, when they rested on her daughter.
She had concealed from the latter, as much as possible, the
swiftness with which her vital force was diminishing, lest she
should increase the care and anxiety which was beginning to
tell upon her health. She knew that the end was not far off:
she could measure its approach, and she acknowledged in her
heart how welcome it would be, but for her daughter's sake.

“It's very kind of thee to come, Friend Woodbury,” said
she. “I've been expecting thee before.”

“I ought to have come sooner,” said he, “but there have
been changes at Lakeside.”

“Yes, I know. The two guests that will not be kept out
have come to thy home, as they come to the homes of others.
We must be ready for either. The Lord sends them both.”

“Yes,” said Woodbury, with a sigh, “but one of them is
long in coming to me.” The sweet serenity and truth of the
old woman's words evoked a true reply. All that she said
came from a heart too sincere for disguise, and spoke to his

[figure description] Page 357.[end figure description]

undisguised self. There would have been something approaching
to sacrilege in an equivocal answer.

She looked at him with a sad, serious inquiry in her glance.
“I see thee's not hasty to open thy doors,” she said, at
last, “and it's well. There's always a blessing in store for
them that wait. I pray that it may come to thee in the Lord's
good time.”

“Amen!” he exclaimed, earnestly. An irresistible impulse,
the next moment, led him to look at Hannah Thurston. She
was setting in order the plants on the little flower-stand before
the window, and her face was turned away from him, but there
was an indefinable intentness in her attitude which told him
that no word had escaped her ears.

Presently she seated herself, and took part in the conversation,
which turned mainly upon Bute and his wife. The light
from the south window fell upon her face, and Woodbury
noticed that it had grown somewhat thinner and wore a weary,
anxious expression. A pale violet shade had settled under the
dark-gray eyes and the long lashes drooped their fringes. No
latent defiance lurked in her features: her manner was grave,
almost to sadness, and in her voice there was a gentle languor,
like that which follows mental exhaustion.

In all their previous interviews, Woodbury had never been
able entirely to banish from his mind the consciousness of her
exceptional position, as a woman. It had tinged, without his
having suspected the fact, his demeanor towards her. Something
of the asserted independence of man to man had modified
the deferential gentleness of man to woman. She had,
perhaps, felt this without being able to define it, for, though
he had extorted her profound respect he had awakened in her
a disposition scarcely warmer than she gave to abstract qualities.
Now, however, she presented herself to him under a
different aspect. He forgot her masculine aspirations, seeing
in her only the faithful, anxious daughter, over whom the
shadow of her approaching loss deepened from day to day.
The former chill of his presence did not return, but in its place

[figure description] Page 358.[end figure description]

a subtle warmth seemed to radiate from him. Before, his
words had excited her intellect: now, they addressed themselves
to her feelings. As the conversation advanced, she recovered
her usual animation, yet still preserved the purely
feminine character which he had addressed in her. The positions
which they had previously occupied were temporarily
forgotten, and at parting each vaguely felt the existence of
unsuspected qualities in the other.

During this first visit, Hannah Thurston indulged without
reserve, in the satisfaction which it gave to her. She always
found it far more agreeable to like than to dislike. Woodbury's
lack of that enthusiasm which in her soul was an ever
burning and mounting fire—his cold, dispassionate power of
judgment—his tolerance of what she considered perverted
habits of the most reprehensible character, and his indifference
to those wants and wrongs of the race which continually appealed
to the Reformer's aid, had at first given her the impression
that the basis of his character was hard and selfish. She had
since modified this view, granting him the high attributes of
truth and charity; she had witnessed the manifestation of his
physical and moral courage; but his individuality still preserved
a cold, statuesque beauty. His mastery over himself,
she supposed, extended to his intellectual passions and his
affections. He would only be swayed by them so far as
seemed to him rational and convenient.

His words to her mother recalled to her mind, she knew
not why, the description of her own father's death. It was
possible that an equal capacity for passion might here again be
hidden under a cold, immovable manner. She had sounded,
tolerably well, the natures of the men of whom she had seen
most, during the past six or eight years, and had found that
their own unreserved protestations of feeling were the measure
of their capacity to feel. There was no necessity, indeed, to
throw a plummet into their streams, for they had egotistically
set up their own Nilometers, and the depth of the current
was indicated at the surface. She began to suspect, now, that

[figure description] Page 359.[end figure description]

she had been mistaken in judging Woodbury by the same test.
The thought, welcome as it was from a broad, humane point
of view, nevertheless almost involved a personal humiliation.
Her strong sense of justice commanded her to rectify the mistake,
while her recognition of it weakened her faith in herself.

In a few days Woodbury came again, and as before, on an
errand of kindness to her mother. She saw that his visits gave
pleasure to the latter, and for that reason alone it was her duty
to desire them, but on this occasion she detected an independent
pleasure of her own at his appearance. A certain friendly
familiarity seemed to be already established between them.
She had been drawn into it, she scarcely knew how, and could
not now withdraw, yet the consciousness of it began to agitate
her in a singular way. A new power came from Woodbury's
presence, surrounded and assailed her. It was not the chill of
his unexcitable intellect, stinging her into a half-indignant resistance.
It was a warm, seductive, indefinable magnetism,
which inspired her with a feeling very much like terror. Its
weight lay upon her for hours after he had gone. Whatever
it was, its source, she feared, must lie in herself; he seemed
utterly unconscious of any design to produce a particular impression
upon her. His manner was as frank and natural as
ever: he conversed about the books which he or she had recently
read, or on subjects of general interest, addressing much
of his discourse to her mother rather than herself. She noticed,
indeed, that he made no reference to the one question
on which they differed so radically; but a little reflection
showed her that he had in no former case commenced the discussion,
nor had he ever been inclined to prolong it when
started.

Their talk turned for a while on the poets. Hannah Thurston
had but slight acquaintance with Tennyson, who was
Woodbury's favorite among living English authors, and he
promised to bring her the book. He repeated the stanzas descriptive
of Jephtha's Daughter, in the “Dream of Fair

[figure description] Page 360.[end figure description]

Women,” the majestic rhythm and superb Hebrew spirit of
which not only charmed her, but her mother also. The old
woman had a natural, though very uncultivated taste for
poetry. She enjoyed nothing which was purely imaginative:
verse, for her, must have a devotional, or at least an ethical
character. In rhythm, also her appreciation was limited. She
delighted most in the stately march of the heroic measure, and
next to that, in the impetuous rush of the dactylic. In youth
her favorite poems had been the “Davidis” of Thomas Elwood,
Pope's “Essay on Man,” and the lamenting sing-song of Refine
Weeks, a Nantucket poet, whom history has forgotten.
The greater part of these works she knew by heart, and would
often repeat in a monotonous chant, resembling that in which
she had formerly preached. Hannah, however, had of late
years somewhat improved her mother's taste by the careful
selection of poetry of a better character, especially Milton's
“Christmas Hymn,” and the works of Thomson and Cowper.

Woodbury returned the very next day, bringing the promised
volumes. He was about to leave immediately, but the
widow insisted on his remaining.

“Do sit down a while, won't thee?” said she. “I wish thee
would read me something else: I like to hear thy voice.”

Woodbury could not refuse to comply. He sat down,
turned over the leaves of the first volume, and finally selected
the lovely idyll of “Dora,” which he read with a pure, distinct
enunciation. Hannah Thurston, busy with her sewing at
a little stand near the eastern window, listened intently. At
the close she turned towards him with softened eyes, and exclaimed:
“How simple! how beautiful!”

“I'm greatly obliged to thee, Maxwell,” said the widow,
addressing Woodbury for the first time by his familiar name.
“It is always pleasant,” she added, smiling, “to an old
woman, to receive a kindness from a young man.”

“But it ought to be the young man's pleasure, as it is his
duty, to give it,” he answered. “I am glad that you like my

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favorite author. I have brought along `The Princess,' also,
Miss Thurston: you have certainly heard of it?”

“Oh yes,” said she, “I saw several critical notices of it
when it was first published, and have always wished to
read it.”

“It gives a poetical view of a subject we have sometimes
discussed,” he added playfully, “and I am not quite sure that
you will be satisfied with the close. It should not be read,
however, as a serious argument on either side. Tennyson, I
suspect, chose the subject for its picturesque effects, rather
than from any intentional moral purpose. I confess I think he
is right. We may find sermons in poems as we find them in
stones, but one should be as unconscious of the fact as the
other. It seems to me that all poetry which the author designs,
in advance, to be excessively moral or pious, is more or
less a failure.”

“Mr. Woodbury! Do you really think so?” exclaimed
Hannah Thurston, in surprise.

“Yes; but the idea is not original with me. I picked it up
somewhere, and finding it true, adopted it as my own. There
was a fanciful illustration, if I recollect rightly—that poetry is
the blossom of Literature, not the fruit; therefore that while
it suggests the fruit—while its very odor foretells the future
flavor—it must be content to be a blossom and nothing more.
The meaning was this: that a moral may breathe through a
poem from beginning to end, but must not be plumply expressed.
I don't know the laws which govern the minds of
poets, but I know when they give me most pleasure. Apply
the test to yourself: I shall be interested to know the result.
Here, for instance, is `The Princess,' which, if it has a particular
moral, has one which you may possibly reject, but I am
sure your enjoyment of pure poetry will not thereby be
lessened.”

“I shall certainly read the book with all the more interest
from what you have said,” she frankly replied. “You have
very much more literary cultivation than I, and perhaps it is

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presumptuous in me to dispute your opinion; but my nature
leads me to honor an earnest feeling for truth and humanity,
even when its expression is not in accordance with literary
laws.”

“I honor such a feeling also, whenever it is genuine, however
expressed,” Woodbury answered, “but I make a distinction
between the feeling and the expression. In other
words, the cook may have an admirable character, and yet the
roast may be spoiled. Pollok is considered orthodox and
Byron heretical, but I am sure you prefer the `Hebrew Melodies'
to the “Course of Time.'”

“Hannah, I guess thee'd better read the book first,” said
the widow, who did not perceive how the conversation had
drifted away from its subject. “It is all the better, perhaps,
if our friend differs a little from thee. When we agree in
every thing, we don't learn much from one another.”

“You are quite right, Friend Thurston,” said Woodbury,
rising. “I should be mistaken in your daughter if she accepted
any opinion of mine, without first satisfying her own
mind of its truth. Good-by!”

He took the widow's hand with a courteous respect, and
then extended his own to Hannah. Hers he held gently for a moment
while he said: “Remember, I shall want to know what
impression the poem makes on your mind. Will you tell me?”

“Thank you. I will tell you,” she said.

Strange to say, the boldest eulogiums which had ever reached
Hannah Thurston's ears, never came to them with so sweet a
welcome as Woodbury's parting compliment. Nay, it was
scarcely a compliment at all; it was a simple recognition of
that earnest seeking for truth which she never hesitated to
claim for herself. Perhaps it was his supposed hostile attitude
which gave the words their value, for our enemies always have
us at a disadvantage when they begin to praise us. Politicians
go into obscurity, and statesmen fall from their high places,
ruined, not by the assaults but by the flatteries of the opposite
party.

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She could no longer consider Woodbury in the light of an
enemy. His presence, his words, his self-possessed manner,
failed to excite the old antagonism, which always marred her
intellectual pleasure in his society. One by one the discordant
elements in her own nature seemed to be withdrawn, or
rather, she feared, were benumbed by some new power which
he was beginning to manifest. She found, with dismay, that
instead of seeking, as formerly, for weapons to combat his
views, her mind rather inclined to the discovery of reasons for
agreeing with them. It mattered little, perhaps, which course
she adopted, so long as the result was Truth; but the fact that
she recognized the change as agreeable gave her uneasiness.
It might be the commencement of a process of mental subjection—
the first meshes of a net of crafty reasoning, designed
to ensnare her judgment and lead her away from the high aims
she prized. Then, on the other hand, she reflected that such
a process presupposed intention on Woodbury's part, and
how could she reconcile it with his manly honesty, his open
integrity of character? Thus, the more enjoyment his visits
gave her while they lasted, the greater the disturbance which
they left behind.

That new and indescribable effluence which his presence gave
forth not only continued, but seemed to increase in power.
Sometimes it affected her with a singular mixture of fascination
and terror, creating a physical restlessness which it was almost
impossible to subdue. An oppressive weight lay upon her
breast; her hands burned, and the nerves in every limb trembled
with a strange impulse to start up and fly. When, at night,
in the seclusion of her chamber, she recalled this condition, her
cheeks grew hot with angry shame of herself, and she clenched
her hands with the determination to resist the return of such
weakness. But even as she did so, she felt that her power of
will had undergone a change. An insidious, corrosive doubt
seemed to have crept over the foundations of her mental life:
the forms of faith, once firm and fair as Ionic pillars under the
cloudless heaven, rocked and tottered as if with the first

[figure description] Page 364.[end figure description]

menacing throes of an earthquake. When she recalled her past
labors for the sacred cause of Woman, a mocking demon now
and then whispered to her that even in good there were the
seeds of harm, and that she had estimated, in vanity, the fruits
of her ministry. “God give me strength!” she whispered—
“strength to conquer doubt, strength to keep the truth for
which I have lived and which must soon be my only life,
strength to rise out of a shameful weakness which I cannot
understand!”

Then, ere she slept, a hope to which she desperately clung,
came to smooth her uneasy pillow. Her own future life must
differ from her present. The hour was not far off, she knew,
when her quiet years in the cottage must come to an end.
She could not shut her eyes to the fact that her mother's time
on earth was short; and short as it was, she would not cloud
it by anxiety for the lonely existence beyond it. She resolutely
thrust her own future from her mind, but it was nevertheless
always present in a vague, hovering form. The uncertainty of
her fate, she now thought,—the dread anticipation of coming
sorrow—had shaken and unnerved her. No doubt her old,
steadfast self-reliance and self-confidence would assert themselves,
after the period of trial had been passed. She must only
have patience, for the doubts which she could not now answer
would then surely be solved. With this consolation at her
heart—with a determination to possess patience, which she
found much more easy than the attempt to possess herself of
will, she would close her aching eyes and court the refreshing
oblivion of sleep.

But sleep did not always come at her call. That idea of
the sad, solitary future, so near at hand, would not be exorcised.
If she repelled it, it came back again in company with
a still more terrible ghost of the Past—her early but now
hopeless dream of love. When she tried to call that dream a
delusion, all the forces of her nature gave her the lie—all the
fibres of her heart, trembling in divinest harmony under the
touch of the tormenting angel, betrayed her, despairingly, to

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her own self. The crown of independence which she had won
bruised her brows; the throne which she claimed was carved
of ice; the hands of her sister women, toiling in the same
path, were grateful in their help, but no positive pulse of
strength throbbed from them to her heart. The arm which
alone could stay her must have firmer muscle than a woman's;
it must uphold as well as clasp. Why did Heaven give her
the dream when it must be forever vain? Where was the
man at the same time tender enough to love, strong enough to
protect and assist, and just enough to acknowledge the equal
rights of woman? Alas! nowhere in the world. She could
not figure to herself his features; he was a far-off unattainable
idea, only; but a secret whisper, deep in the sacredest
shrine of her soul, told her that if he indeed existed, if he
should find his way to her, if the pillow under her cheek were
his breast, if his arms held her fast in the happy subjection
of love—but no, the picture was not to be endured. It was
a bliss, more terrible in its hopelessness, than the most awful
grief in its certainty. She shuddered and clasped her hands
crushingly together, as with the strength of desperation, she
drove it from her bosom.

Had her life been less secluded, the traces of her internal
struggles must have been detected by others. Her mother,
indeed, noticed an unusual restlessness in her manner, but attributed
it to care for her own condition. With the exception
of Mrs. Waldo, they saw but few persons habitually.
Miss Sophia Stevenson or even Mrs. Lemuel Styles occasionally
called, and the widow always made use of these occasions to
persuade Hannah to restore herself by a walk in the open air.
When the former found that their visits were thus put to good
service, they benevolently agreed to come regularly. The
relief she thus obtained, in a double sense, cheered and invigorated
Hannah Thurston. Her favorite walk, out the Mulligansville
road, to the meadows of East Atauga Creek, took
her in a quarter of an hour from the primly fenced lots and
stiff houses of the village to the blossoming banks of the

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winding stream, to the sweet breath of the scented grass, and
the tangled thickets of alder, over which bittersweet and
clematis ran riot and strove for the monopoly of support.
Here, all her vague mental troubles died away like the memory
of an oppressive dream; she drew resignation from every aspect
of Nature, and confidence in herself from the crowding
associations of the Past which the landscape inspired.

Mrs. Waldo, of course, soon became aware of Woodbury's frequent
visits. He had made no secret of them, as he always called
at the Parsonage at the same time, and she had shared equally
in the ripening vintage of Lakeside. But he had spoken much
more of the Widow Thurston than of her daughter, and the
former had been equally free in expressing her pleasure at his
visits, so that Mrs. Waldo never doubted the continuance of
the old antagonism between Hannah and Woodbury. Their
reciprocal silence in relation to each other confirmed her in
this supposition. She was sincerely vexed at a dislike which
seemed not only unreasonable, but unnatural, and grew so impatient
at the delayed conciliation that she finally spoke her
mind on the subject.

“Well, Hannah,” she said, one day, when Woodbury's
name had been incidentally mentioned, “I really think it is time
that you and he should practise a little charity towards each
other. I've been waiting, and waiting, to see your prejudices
begin to wear away, now that you know him better. You
can't think how it worries me that two of my best friends,
who are so right and sensible in all other acts of their lives,
should be so stubbornly set against each other.”

“Prejudices? Does he think I am stubbornly set against
him?” Hannah Thurston cried, the warm color mounting into
her face.

“Not he! He says nothing about you, and that's the worst
of it. You say nothing about him, either. But anybody can
see it. There, I've vexed you, and I suppose I ought not to
have opened my mouth, but I love you so dearly, Hannah—I
love him, too, as a dear friend—and I can't for the life of me

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see why you are blind to the truth and goodness in each other
that I see in both of you.”

Here Mrs. Waldo bent over her and kissed her cheek as a
mother might have done. The color faded from Hannah
Thurston's face, as she answered: “I know you are a dear,
good friend, and as such you cannot vex me. I do not know
whether you have mistaken Mr. Woodbury's feelings: you
certainly have mistaken mine. I did his character, at first, injustice,
I will confess. Perhaps I may have had a prejudice
against him, but I am not aware that I have one now. I
honor him as a noble-minded, just, and unselfish man. We
have different views of life, but in this respect he has taught
me, by his tolerance towards me, to be at least equally tolerant
towards him.”

“You make me happy!” cried Mrs. Waldo, in unfeigned
delight; but the next instant she added, with a sigh: “But, in
spite of all, you don't seem to me like friends.”

This explanation added another trouble to Hannah Thurston's
mind. It was very possible that Woodbury suspected
her of cherishing an unfriendly prejudice against him. She
had assuredly given him cause for such a suspicion, and if the
one woman in Ptolemy, who, after her mother, knew her best,
had received this impression, it would not be strange if he
shared it. In such case, what gentle consideration, what forgiving
kindness had he not exhibited towards her? What
other man of her acquaintance would have acted with the same
magnanimity? Was it not her duty to undeceive him—not
by words, but by meeting him frankly and gratefully—by exhibiting
to him, in some indirect way, her confidence in his
nobility of character?

Thus, every thing conspired to make him the centre of her
thoughts, and the more she struggled to regain her freedom,
the more helplessly she entangled herself in the web which his
presence had spun around her.

p713-373 CHAPTER XXIX. IN WHICH A CRISIS APPROACHES.

[figure description] Page 368.[end figure description]

One cannot play with fire without burning one's fingers.
Woodbury supposed that he was pursuing an experiment,
which might at any moment be relinquished, long after a deep
and irresistible interest in its object had taken full possession
of him. Seeing Hannah Thurston only as a daughter—conversing
with her only as a woman—her other character ceased
to be habitually present to his mind. After a few visits, the
question which he asked himself was not: “Will I be able to
love her?” but: “Will I be able to make her love me?” Of
his own ability to answer the former question he was entirely
satisfied, though he steadily denied to himself the present existence
of passion. He acknowledged that her attraction for
him had greatly strengthened—that he detected a new pleasure
in her society—that she was not unfemininely cold and hard,
as he had feared, but at least gentle and tender: yet, with all
this knowledge, there came no passionate, perturbing thrill to
his heart, such as once had heralded the approach of love. She
had now a permanent place in his thoughts, it is true: he
could scarcely have shut her out, if he had wished: and all
the new knowledge which he had acquired prompted him to
stake his rising hopes upon one courageous throw, and trust
the future, if he gained it, to the deeper and truer development
of her nature which would follow.

At the next visit which he paid to the cottage after Mrs.
Waldo's half-reproachful complaint, the friendly warmth with
which Hannah Thurston received him sent a delicious throb
of sweetness to his heart. Poor Hannah! In her anxiety to

[figure description] Page 369.[end figure description]

be just, she had totally forgotten what her treatment of Seth
Wattles, from a similar impulse, had brought upon her. She
only saw, in Woodbury's face, the grateful recognition of her
manner towards him, and her conscience became quiet at once.
The key-note struck at greeting gave its character to the interview,
which Woodbury prolonged much beyond his usual
habit. He had never been so attractive, but at the same time,
his presence had never before caused her such vague alarm.
All the cold indifference, which she had once imagined to be
his predominant characteristic, had melted like a snow-wreath
in the sunshine: a soft, warm, pliant grace diffused itself over
his features and form, and a happy under-current of feeling
made itself heard in his lightest words. He drew her genuine
self to the light, before she suspected how much she had
allowed him to see: she, who had resolved that he should only
know her in her strength, had made a voluntary confession of
her weakness!

Hannah Thurston was proud as she was pure, and this weird
and dangerous power in the man, wounded as well as disturbed
her. She felt sure that he exercised it unconsciously,
and therefore he was not to be blamed; but it assailed her individual
freedom—her coveted independence of other minds—
none the less. It was weakness to shrink from the encounter:
it was humiliation to acknowledge, as she must, that her
powers of resistance diminished with each attack.

Woodbury rode home that evening very slowly. For the
first time since Bute's marriage, as he looked across the meadows
to a dusky white speck that glimmered from the knoll in
the darkening twilight, there was no pang at his heart. “I
foresee,” he said to himself, “that if I do not take care, I shall
love this girl madly and passionately. I know her now in her
true tenderness and purity; I see what a wealth of womanhood
is hidden under her mistaken aims. But is she not too
loftily pure—too ideal in her aspirations—for my winning?
Can she bear the knowledge of my life? I cannot spare her
the test. If she comes to me at last, it must be with eveey

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veil of the Past lifted. There dare be no mystery between
us—no skeleton in our cupboard. If she were less true, less
noble—but no, there can be no real sacrament of marriage,
without previous confession. I am laying the basis of relations
that stretch beyond this life. It would be a greater wrong to
shrink, for her sake, than for my own. It must come to this,
and God give her strength of heart equal to her strength of
mind!”

Woodbury felt that her relation to him had changed, and
he could estimate, very nearly, the character which it had now
assumed. Of her struggles with herself—of the painful impression
which his visits left behind—he had, of course, not
the slightest presentiment. He knew, however, that no suspicion
of his feelings had entered her breast, and he had
reasons of his own for desiring that she should remain innocent
of their existence, for the present. His plans, here, came
to an end, for the change in himself interposed an anxiety
which obscured his thoughts. He had reached the point where
all calculation fails, and where the strongest man, if his passion
be genuine, must place his destiny in the hands of
Chance.

But there is, fortunately, a special chance provided for cases
of this kind. All the moods of Nature, all the little accidents
of life, become the allies of love. When the lover, looking
back from his post of assured fortune over the steps by which
he attained it, thinks: “Had it not been for such or such a
circumstance, I might have wholly missed my happiness,” he
does not recognize that all the powers of the earth and air
were really in league with him—that his success was not the
miracle he supposed, but that his failure would have been. It
is well, however, that this delusion should come to silence the
voice of pride, and temper his heart with a grateful humility:
for him it is necessary that “fear and sorrow fan the fire of
joy.”

Woodbury had no sooner intrusted to Chance the further
development of his fate, than Chance generously requited the

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trust. It was certainly a wonderful coincidence that, as he
walked into Ptolemy on a golden afternoon in late September,
quite uncertain whether he should this time call at the widow's
cottage, he should meet Hannah Thurston on foot, just at the
junction of the Anacreon and Mulligansville highways. It
was Miss Sophia Stevenson's day for relieving her, and she had
gone out for her accustomed walk up the banks of the stream.

As Woodbury lifted his hat to greet her, his face brightened
with a pleasure which he did not now care to conceal. There
was a hearty, confiding warmth in the grasp of his hand, as he
stood face to face, looking into her clear, dark-gray eyes with
an expression as frank and unembarrassed as a boy's. It was
this transparent warmth and frankness which swept away her
cautious resolves at a touch. In spite of herself, she felt that
an intimate friendship was fast growing up between them, and
she knew not why the consciousness of it should make her so
uneasy. There was surely no reproach to her in the fact that
their ideas and habits were so different; there was none of
her friends with whom she did not differ on points more or
less important. The current setting towards her was pure
and crystal-clear, yet she drew back from it as from the rush
of a dark and turbid torrent.

“Well-met!” cried Woodbury, with a familiar playfulness.
“We are both of one mind to-day, and what a day for out-of-doors!
I am glad you are able to possess a part of it; your
mother is better, I hope?”

“She is much as usual, and I should not have left her, but
for the kindness of a friend who comes regularly on this day
of the week to take my place for an hour or two.”

“Have you this relief but once in seven days?”

“Oh, no. Mrs. Styles comes on Tuesdays, and those two
days, I find, are sufficient for my needs. Mrs. Waldo would
relieve me every afternoon if I would allow her.”

“If you are half as little inclined for lonely walks as I am,”
said Woodbury, “you will not refuse my companionship to-day.
I see you are going out the eastern road.”

[figure description] Page 372.[end figure description]

“My favorite walk,” she answered, “is in the meadows
yonder. It is the wildest and most secluded spot in the neighborhood
of the village.”

“Ah, I have noticed, from the road, in passing, the beauty
of those elms and clumps of alder, and the picturesque curves
of the creek. I should like to make a nearer acquaintance
with them. Do you feel sufficient confidence in my appreciation
of Nature to perform the introduction?”

“Nature is not exclusive,” said she, adopting his gay tone,
“and if she were, I think she could not exclude you, who have
known her in her royal moods, from so simple and unpretending
a landscape as this.”

“The comparison is good,” he answered, walking onward
by her side, “but you have drawn the wrong inference. I
find that every landscape has an individual character. The
royal moods, as you rightly term them, may impose upon us,
like human royalty; but the fact that you have been presented
at Court does not necessarily cause the humblest man to open
his heart to you. What is it to yonder alder thickets that I
have looked on the Himalayas? What does East Atauga Creek
care for the fact that I have floated on the Ganges? If the
scene has a soul at all, it will recognize every one of your footsteps,
and turn a cold shoulder to me, if I come with any such
pretensions.”

Hannah Thurston laughed at the easy adroitness with which
he had taken up and applied her words. It was a light, graceful
play of intellect to which she was unaccustomed—which,
indeed, a year previous, would have struck her as trivial and
unworthy an earnest mind. But she had learned something
in that time. Her own mind was no longer content to move
in its former rigid channels; she acknowledged the cheerful
brightness which a sunbeam of fancy can diffuse over the sober
coloring of thought.

He let down the movable rails from the panel of fence
which gave admittance into the meadow, and put them up
again after they had entered. The turf was thick and dry,

[figure description] Page 373.[end figure description]

with a delightful elasticity which lifted the feet where they
pressed it. A few paces brought them to the edge of the belt
of thickets, or rather islands of lofty shrubbery, between which
the cattle had worn paths, and which here and there enclosed
little peninsulas of grass and mint, embraced by the swift
stream. The tall autumnal flowers, yellow and dusky purple,
bloomed on all sides, and bunches of the lovely fringed
gentian, blue as a wave of the Mediterranean, were set among
the ripe grass like sapphires in gold. The elms which at intervals
towered over this picturesque jungle, had grown up
since the valley-bottom was cleared, and no neighboring trees
had marred the superb symmetry of their limbs.

Threading the winding paths to the brink of the stream, or
back again to the open meadow, as the glimpses through the
labyrinth enticed them, they slowly wandered away from the
road. Woodbury was not ashamed to show his delight in
every new fragment of landscape which their exploration disclosed,
and Miss Thurston was thus led to make him acquainted
with her own selected gallery of pictures, although her exclusive
right of possession to them thereby passed away forever.

Across one of the bare, grassy peninsulas between the thicket
and the stream lay a huge log which the spring freshet had stolen
from some saw-mill far up the valley. Beyond it, the watery
windings ceased for a hundred yards or more, opening a space
for the hazy hills in the distance to show their purple crests.
Otherwise, the spot was wholly secluded: there was not a
dwelling in sight, nor even a fence, to recall the vicinity of
human life. This was the enticing limit of Hannah Thurston's
walks. She had not intended to go so far to-day, but “a
spirit in her feet” brought her to the place before she was
aware.

“Ah!” cried Woodbury, as they emerged from the tangled
paths, “I see that you are recognized here. Nature has intentionally
placed this seat for you at the very spot where you
have at once the sight of the hills and the sound of the water.
How musical it is, just at this point! I know you sing here,

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sometimes: you cannot help it, with such an accompaniment.”

She did not answer, but a flitting smile betrayed her assent.
They took their seats on the log, as if by a silent understanding.
The liquid gossip of the stream, in which many voices
seemed to mingle in shades of tone so delicate that the ear
lost, as soon as it caught them, sounded lullingly at their feet.
Now and then a golden leaf dropped from the overhanging
elm, and quivered slantwise to the ground.

“Ah, that reminds me,” said Woodbury, finally breaking
the peaceful, entrancing silence—“one of those exquisite songs
in `The princess' came into my head. Have you read the
book? You promised to tell me what impression it made
upon you.”

“Your judgment is correct, so far,” she answered, “that it
is poetry, not argument. But it could never have been written
by one who believes in the just rights of woman. In the
first place, the Princess has a very faulty view of those rights,
and in the second place she adopts a plan to secure them which
is entirely impracticable. If the book had been written for a
serious purpose, I should have been disappointed; but, taking
it for what it is, it has given me very great pleasure.”

“You say the Princess's plan of educating her sex to independence
is impracticable; yet—pardon me if I have misunderstood
you—you seem to attribute your subjection to the influence
of man—an influence which must continue to exercise the
same power it ever has. What plan would you substitute for
hers?”

“I do not know,” she answered, hesitatingly; “I can only
hope and believe that the Truth must finally vindicate itself.
I have never aimed at any thing more than to assert it.”

“Then you do not place yourself in an attitude hostile to
man?” he asked.

Hannah Thurston was embarrassed for a moment, but her
frankness conquered. “I fear, indeed, that I have done so,”
she said. “There have been times when a cruel attack has

[figure description] Page 375.[end figure description]

driven me to resistance. You can scarcely appreciate our
position, Mr. Woodbury. We could bear open and honorable
hostility, but the conventionalities which protect us against
that offer us no defence from sneers and ridicule. The very
term applied to us—`strong-minded'—implies that weak minds
are our natural and appropriate inheritance. It is in human
nature, I think, to forgive honest enmity sooner than covert
contempt.”

“Would it satisfy you that the sincerity and unselfishness
of your aims are honored, though the aims themselves are
accounted mistaken.”

“It is all we could ask now!” she exclaimed, her eyes growing
darker and brighter, and her voice thrilling with its earnest
sweetness. “But who would give us that much?”

“I would,” said Woodbury, quietly. “Will you pardon
me for saying that it has seemed to me, until recently, as if
you suspected me of an active hostility which I have really
never felt. My opinions are the result of my experience of
men, and you cannot wonder if they differ from yours. I
should be very wrong to arrogate to myself any natural superiority
over you. I think there never can be any difficulty in
determining the relative rights of the sexes, when they truly
understand and respect each other. I can unite with you in
desiring reciprocal knowledge and reciprocal honor. If that
shall be attained, will you trust to the result?”

“Forgive me: I did misunderstand you,” she said, not
answering his last question.

A pause ensued. The stream gurgled on, and the purple
hills smiled through the gaps in the autumnal foliage. “Do
you believe that Ida was happier with the Prince, supposing
he were faithful to the picture he drew, than if she had remained
at the head of her college?” he suddenly asked.

“You will acquit me of hostility to your sex when I say `Yes.'
The Prince promised her equality, not subjection. It is sad
that the noble and eloquent close of the poem should be its
most imaginative part.”

[figure description] Page 376.[end figure description]

The tone of mournful unbelief in her voice fired Woodbury's
blood. His heart protested against her words and demanded
to be heard. The deepening intimacy of their talk had brought
him to that verge of frankness where the sanctities of feeling,
which hide themselves from the gaze of the world, steal up to
the light and boldly reveal their features. “No,” he said, warmly
and earnestly, “the picture is not imaginative. Its counterpart
exists in the heart of every true man. There can be no
ideal perfection in marriage because there is none in life; but
it can, and should, embody the tenderest affection, the deepest
trust, the divinest charity, and the purest faith which human
nature is capable of manifesting. I, for one man, found my own
dream in the words of the Prince. I have not remained unmarried
from a selfish idea of independence or from a want of
reverence for woman. Because I hold her so high, because I
seek to set her side by side with me in love and duty and confidence,
I cannot profane her and myself by an imperfect union.
I do not understand love without the most absolute mutual
knowledge, and a trust so complete that there can be no question
of rights on either side. Where that is given, man will
never withhold, nor will woman demand, what she should or
should not possess. That is my dream of marriage, and it is
not a dream too high for attainment in this life!”

The sight of Hannah Thurston's face compelled him to
pause. She was deadly pale, and trembled visibly. The moment
he ceased speaking, she rose from her seat, and, after
mechanically plucking some twigs of the berried bittersweet,
said: “It is time for me to return.”

Woodbury had not intended to say so much, and was fearful,
at first, that his impassioned manner had suggested the
secret he still determined to hide. In that case, she evidently
desired to escape its utterance, but he had a presentiment that
her agitation was owing to a different cause. Could it be
that he had awakened the memory of some experience of love
through which she had passed? After the first jealous doubt
which this thought inspired, it presented itself to his mind as

[figure description] Page 377.[end figure description]

a relief. The duty which pressed upon him would be more
lightly performed; the test to which he must first subject
her would be surer of success.

As they threaded the embowered paths on their homeward
way, he said to her, gravely, but cheerfully: “You see, Miss
Thurston, your doubt of my sex has forced me to show myself
to you as I am, in one respect. But I will not regret the confession,
unless you should think it intrusive.”

“Believe me,” she answered, “I know how to value it.
You have made me ashamed of my unbelief.”

“And you have confirmed me in my belief. This is a subject
which neither man nor woman can rightly interpret,
alone. Why should we never speak of that which is most
vital in our lives? Here, indeed, we are governed by conventional
ideas, springing from a want of truth and purity.
But a man is always ennobled by allowing a noble woman to
look into his heart. Do you recollect my story about the
help Mrs. Blake gave me, under awkward circumstances,
before her marriage?”

“Perfectly. It was that story which made me wish to
know her. What an admirable woman she is!”

“Admirable, indeed!” Woodbury exclaimed. “That was
not the only, nor the best help she gave me. I learned from
her that women, when they are capable of friendship—don't
misunderstand me, I should say the same thing of men—are
the most devoted friends in the world. She is the only consoling
figure in an episode of my life which had a great influence
upon my fate. The story is long since at an end, but I
should like to tell it to you, some time.”

“If you are willing to do so, I shall be glad to hear another
instance of Mrs. Blake's kindness.”

“Not only that,” Woodbury continued, “but still another
portion of my history. I will not press my confidence upon
you, but I shall be glad, very glad, if you will kindly consent
to receive it. Some things in my life suggest questions which
I have tried to answer, and cannot. I must have a woman's

[figure description] Page 378.[end figure description]

help. I know you are all truth and candor, and I am willing
to place my doubts in your hands.”

He spoke earnestly and eagerly, walking by her side, but
with eyes fixed upon the ground. His words produced in
her a feeling of interest and curiosity, under which lurked a
singular reluctance. She was still unnerved by her former
agitation. “Why should you place such confidence in me?”
she at length faltered. “You have other friends who deserve
it better.”

“We cannot always explain our instincts,” he answered.
“I must tell you, and you alone. If I am to have help in
these doubts, it is you who can give it.”

His words seized her and held her powerless. Her Quaker
blood still acknowledged the authority of those mysterious
impulses which are truer than reason, because they come from
a deeper source. He spoke with a conviction from which
there was no appeal, and the words of refusal vanished from
her lips and from her heart.

“Tell me, then,” she said. “I will do my best. I hope I
may be able to help you.”

He took her hand and held it a moment, with a warm pressure.
“God bless you!” was all he said.

They silently returned up the road. On reaching the gate
of the cottage, he took leave of her, saying: “You will have
my story to-morrow.” His face was earnest and troubled;
it denoted the presence of a mystery, the character of which
she could not surmise.

On entering the cottage, she first went up-stairs to her own
room. She had a sensation of some strange expression having
come over her face, which must be banished from it before she
could meet her mother. She must have five minutes alone to
think upon what had passed, before she could temporarily put
it away from her mind. But her thoughts were an indistinct
chaos, through which only two palpable sensations crossed each
other as they moved to and fro—one of unreasoning joy, one
of equally unreasoning terror. What either of them

[figure description] Page 379.[end figure description]

portended she could not guess. She only felt that there was no stable
point to which she could cling, but the very base of her being
seemed to shift as her thoughts pierced down to it.

Her eyes fell upon the volume of “The Princess,” which lay
upon the little table beside her bed. She took it up with a
sudden desire to read again the closing scene, where the
heroine lays her masculine ambition in the hands of love. The
book opened of itself, at another page: the first words arrested
her eye and she read, involuntarily:

The weird, uncontrollable power which had taken possession
of her reached its climax. She threw down the book and
burst into tears.

p713-385 CHAPTER XXX. MR. WOODBURY'S CONFESSION.

[figure description] Page 380.[end figure description]

Towards evening, on Saturday, Bute called at the cottage,
and after inquiring concerning the widow's condition, and
giving, in return, a most enthusiastic report of Carrie's accomplishments,
he produced a package, with the remark:

“Here, Miss Hannah, 's a book that Mr. Max. give me for
you. He says you needn't be in a hurry to send any of 'em
back. He got a new lot from New York yisterday.”

She laid it aside until night. It was late before her mother
slept and she could be certain of an hour, alone, and secure
from interruption. When at last all was quiet and the fire
was burning low on the hearth, and the little clock ticked like
a strong pulse of health, in mockery of the fading life in the
bosom of the dear invalid in the next room, she took the book
in her hands. She turned it over first and examined the paper
wrapping, as if that might suggest the nature of the unknown
contents; then slowly untied the string and unfolded the
paper. When the book appeared, she first looked at the back;
it was Ware's “Zenobia”—a work she had long desired to
possess. A thick letter slipped out from between the blank
leaves and fell on her lap. On the envelope was her name
only—“Hannah Thurston”—in a clear, firm, masculine hand.
She laid the volume aside, broke the seal and read the letter
through from beginning to end:

“Dear Miss Thurston:—I know how much I have asked
of you in begging permission to write, for your eye, the story
which follows. Therefore I have not allowed myself to stand

[figure description] Page 381.[end figure description]

shivering on the brink of a plunge which I have determined
to make, or to postpone it, from the fear that the venture of
confidence which I now send out will come to shipwreck.
Since I have learned to appreciate the truth and nobleness of
your nature—since I have dared to hope that you honor me
with a friendly regard—most of all, since I find that the feelings
which I recognize as the most intimate and sacred portion
of myself seek expression in your presence, I am forced to
make you a participant in the knowledge of my life. Whether
it be that melancholy knowledge which a tender human charity
takes under its protecting wing and which thenceforward
sleeps calmly in some shadowy corner of memory, or that evil
knowledge which torments because it cannot be forgotten, I
am not able to foresee. I will say nothing, in advance, to
secure a single feeling of sympathy or consideration which
your own nature would not spontaneously prompt you to give.
I know that in this step I may not be acting the part of a
friend; but, whatever consequences may follow it, I entreat
you to believe that there is no trouble which I would not
voluntarily take upon myself, rather than inflict upon you a
moment's unnecessary pain.

“Have you ever, in some impartial scrutiny of self, discovered
to what extent your views of Woman, and your aspirations
in her behalf, were drawn from your own nature? Are
you not inclined to listen to your own voice as if it were the
collective voice of your sex? If so, you may to some extent,
accept me as an interpretation of Man. I am neither better
nor worse than the general average of men. My principal advantages
are, that I was most carefully and judiciously
educated, and that my opportunities of knowing mankind have
been greater than is usual. A conscientious study of human
nature ought to be the basis of all theories of reform. I think
you will agree with me, thus far; and therefore, however my
present confession may change your future relations towards
me, I shall have, at least, the partial consolation of knowing
that I have added something to your knowledge.

[figure description] Page 382.[end figure description]

“Let me add only this, before I commence my narrative—
that it treats entirely of the occurrences of my life, which have
brought me near to woman through my emotions. It is my
experience of the sex, so far as that experience has taken a
deeper hold on my heart. You are not so cold and unsympathetic
as to repel the subject. The instinct which has led me
to choose you as the recipient of my confidence cannot be
false. That same instinct tells me that I shall neither withhold
nor seek to extenuate whatever directly concerns myself. I
dare not do either.

“My nature was once not so calm and self-subdued as it
may seem to you now. As a youth I was ardent, impetuous,
and easily controlled by my feelings. In the heart of almost
and boy, from seventeen to twenty, there is a train laid, and
waiting for the match. As I approached the latter age, mine
was kindled by a girl two years younger than myself, the
daughter of a friend of my father. I suppose all early passions
have very much the same character: they are intense, absorbing,
unreasoning, but generally shallow, not from want of sincerity
but from want of development. The mutual attachment
necessarily showed itself, and was tacitly permitted, but without
any express engagement. I had never surprised her with
any sudden declaration of love: our relation had gradually
grown into existence, and we were both so happy therein that
we did not need to question and discuss our feelings. In fact,
we were rarely sufficiently alone to have allowed of such confidences;
but we sought each other in society or in our respective
family circles and created for ourselves a half-privacy
in the presence of others. Nothing seemed more certain to
either of us than that our fates were already united, for we
accepted the tolerance of our attachment as a sanction of its
future seal upon our lives.

“After my father's failure and death, however, I discovered,
with bitterness of heart, that it was not alone my pecuniary
prospects which had changed. Her father, a shrewd, hard
man of business, was one of the very few who prospered in a

[figure description] Page 383.[end figure description]

season of general ruin—who perhaps foresaw the crash and
prepared himself to take advantage of the splendid opportunities
which it offered. His wealth was doubled, probably
trebled, in a year: he won advantages which compelled the
most exclusive circles to receive him, and his family dropped
their old associations as fast as they familiarized themselves
with the new. I saw this change, at first, without the slightest
misgiving: my faith in human nature was warm and fresh,
and the satisfied bliss of my affections disposed me to judge
all men kindly. I only refrained from asking the father's assistance
in my straits, from a feeling of delicacy, not because
I had any suspicion that it would not be given. Little by
little, however, the conviction forced itself upon my mind that
I was no longer a welcome visitor at the house: I was dropped
from the list of guests invited to dinners and entertainments,
and my reception became cold and constrained. From the
sadness and uneasiness on the face of my beloved, I saw that
she was suffering for my sake, and on questioning her she did
not deny that she had been urged to give me up. She assured
me, nevertheless, of her own constancy, and exhorted me to
have patience until my prospects should improve.

“It was at this juncture that Miss Remington (Mrs. Blake,
you will remember) became a comforting angel to both of us.
She had remarked our attachment from its first stage, and with
her profound scorn of the pretensions of wealth, she determined
to assist the course of true love. We met, as if by
accident, at her father's house, and she generally contrived that
we should have a few minutes alone. Thus, several months
passed away. My position had not advanced, because I had
every thing to learn when I first took it, but I began to have
more confidence in myself, and remained cheerful and hopeful.
I was not disturbed by the fact that my beloved sometimes
failed to keep her appointments, but I could not help remarking,
now, that when she did appear, she seemed ill at ease and
strove to make the interviews as short as possible.

“There was something in Miss Remington's manner, also,

[figure description] Page 384.[end figure description]

which I could not understand. I missed the frank, hearty
sympathy with faithful and persecuted love, which she had
given me. A restless anxiety, pointing to one thing or
another, but never towards the truth, took possession of me.
One day on making my pre-arranged call, I found Miss Remington
alone. Her face was grave and sad. She saw my look
of disappointment: she allowed me to walk impatiently up and
down the room three or four times, then she arose and seized
me by both hands. `Am I mistaken in you?' she asked:
`Are you yet a man?' `I am trying to prove it,' I answered.
`Then,' she said, `prove it to me. If you were to have a
tooth drawn, would you turn back a dozen times from
the dentist's door and bear the ache a day longer, or would
you go in at once and have it out?' I sat down, chilled to
the heart, and said, desperately: `I am ready for the operation!
' She smiled, but there were tears of pity in her eyes.
She told me as kindly and tenderly as possible, all she had
learned: that the girl who possessed my unquestioning faith
was unworthy of the gift: that the splendors of the new circle
into which she had ascended had become indispensable to her:
that her attachment to me was now a simple embarrassment:
that her beauty had attracted wealthy admirers, one of whom,
a shallow-brained egotist, was reported to be especially favored
by her, and that any hope I might have of her constancy
to me must be uprooted as a delusion.

“I tried to reject this revelation, but the evidence was
too clear to be discredited. Nevertheless, I insisted on seeing
the girl once more, and Miss Remington brought about the
interview. I was too deeply disappointed to be indignant:
she showed a restless impatience to be gone, as if some remnant
of conscience still spoke in her heart. I told her, sadly,
that I saw she was changed. If her attachment for me had
faded, as I feared, I would not despotically press mine upon
her, but would release her from the mockery of a duty which
her heart no longer acknowledged. I expected a penitent
confession of the truth, in return, and was therefore wholly

[figure description] Page 385.[end figure description]

unprepared for the angry reproaches she heaped upon me.
`Very fine!' she cried; `I always thought there was no suspicion
where there was love! I am to be accused of falsehood,
from a jealous whim. It's very easy for you to give up an
attachment that died out long ago!' But I will not repeat
her expressions further. I should never have comprehended
them without Miss Remington's assistance. She was vexed
that I should have discovered her want of faith and given her
back her freedom: she should have been the first to break the
bonds. I laughed, in bitterness of heart, at her words; I
could give her no other answer.

“The shock my affections received was deeper than I cared
to show. It was renewed, when, three months afterwards,
the faithless girl married the rich fool whom she had preferred
to me. I should have become moody and cynical but for the
admirable tact with which Miss Remington, in her perfect
friendship, softened the blow. Many persons suppose that a
pure and exalted relation of this kind cannot exist between
man and woman, without growing into love—in other words,
that friendship seeks its fulfilment in the same sex and love
in the opposite. I do not agree with this view. The thought
of loving Julia Remington never entered my mind, and she
would have considered me as wanting in sanity if I had intimated
such a thing, but there was a happy and perfect confidence
between us, which was my chief support in those days
of misery.

“I accepted, eagerly, the proposition to become the Calcutta
agent of the mercantile house in which I was employed. The
shadow of my disappointment still hung over me, and there
were now but few associations of my life in New York to
make the parting difficult. I went, and in the excitement of
new scenes, in the absorbing duties of my new situation, in
the more masculine strength that came with maturity, I gradually
forgot the blow which had been struck—or, if I did not
forget, the sight of the scar no longer recalled the pain of the
wound. Nevertheless, it had made me suspicious and fearful.

[figure description] Page 386.[end figure description]

I questioned every rising inclination of my heart, and suppressed
the whispers of incipient affection, determined that
no woman should ever again deceive me as the first had done.
The years glided away, one by one; I had slowly acquired the
habit of self-control, on which I relied as a natural and sufficient
guard for my heart, and the longing for woman's partnership
in life, which no man can ever wholly suppress, again began
to make itself heard. I did not expect a recurrence of the
passion of youth. I knew that I had changed, and that love,
therefore, must come to me in a different form. I remembered
what I heard at home, as a boy, that when the original forest
is cleared away, a new forest of different trees is developed
from the naked soil. But I still suspected that there must be
a family likeness in the growth, and that I should recognize its
sprouting germs.

“Between five and six years ago, it was necessary that I
should visit Europe, in the interest of the house. I was absent
from India nearly a year, and during that time made my
first acquaintance with Switzerland, the memory of which is
now indissolubly connected, in my mind, with that song which
I have heard you sing. But it is not of this that I would
speak. I find myself shrinking from the new revelation which
must be made. The story is not one of guilt—not even of
serious blame, in the eyes of the world. If it were necessary,
I could tell it to any man, without reluctance for my own sake.
Men, in certain respects, have broader and truer views of life
than women; they are more tender in their judgment, more
guarded in their condemnation. I am not justifying myself,
in advance, for I can acquit myself of any intentional wrong.
I only feel that the venture, embodied in my confession, is about
to be sent forth—either to pitying gales that shall waft it safely
back to me, or to storms in which it shall go down. Recollect,
dear Miss Thurston, that whatever of strength I may possess
you have seen. I am now about to show you, voluntarily, my
weakness.

“Among the passengers on board the steamer by which I

[figure description] Page 387.[end figure description]

returned to India, there was a lady who had been recommended
to my care by some mutual acquaintance in England.
She was the wife of a physician in the Company's Service, who
was stationed at Benares, and who had sent her home with
her children a year and a half before. The latter were left in
England, while she returned to share the exile of her husband
until he should be entitled to a pension. She was a thoroughly
refined and cultivated woman, of almost my own age, and
shrank from contact with the young cubs of cadets and the ostentatious
indigo-planters, with their beer-drinking wives, who
were almost the only other passengers. We were thus thrown
continually together, and the isolation of ocean-life contributed
to hasten our intimacy. Little by little that intimacy grew
deep, tender, and powerful. I told her the humiliating story
of my early love which you have just read, and she described
to me, with tearful reluctance, the unhappiness of her married
life. Her husband had gone to England eight years before, on
leave of absence, on purpose to marry. She had been found
to answer his requirements, and ignorant of life as she was at
that time, ignorant of her own heart, had been hurried into
the marriage by her own family. Her father was in moderate
circumstances, and he had many daughters to provide with
husbands; this was too good a chance to let slip, and, as it
was known that she had no other attachment, her hesitation
was peremptorily overruled. She discovered, too late, that
there was not only no point of sympathy between her husband
and herself, but an absolute repulsion. He was bold and
steady-handed as a surgeon, and had performed some daring
operations which had distinguished him in his profession; but
he was hard, selfish, and tyrannical in his domestic relations,
and his unfortunate wife could only look forward with dread
to the continual companionship which was her doom.

“I had been sure of recognizing any symptom of returning
love in my heart—but I was mistaken. It took the form of
pity, and so lulled my suspicions to sleep that my power of
will was drugged before I knew it. Her own heart was not

[figure description] Page 388.[end figure description]

more merciful towards her. Poor woman! if she had ever
dreamed of love the dream had been forgotten. She was ignorant
of the fatal spell which had come upon us, and I did
not detect my own passion until its reflection was thrown
back to me from her innocent face. When I had discovered
the truth, it was too late—too late, I mean, for her happiness,
not too late for the honor of both our lives. I could not explain
to her a danger which she did not suspect, nor could I
embitter, by an enforced coldness, her few remaining happy
days of our voyage. With a horrible fascination, I saw her
drawing nearer and nearer the brink of knowledge, and my
lips were sealed, that only could have uttered the warning cry.

“Again I was called upon to suffer, but in a way I had
never anticipated. The grief of betrayed love is tame, beside
the despair of forbidden love. This new experience showed
me how light was the load which I had already borne. On
the one side, two hearts that recognized each other and would
have been faithful to the end of time; on the other, a monstrous
bond, which had only the sanction of human laws. I
rebelled, in my very soul, against the mockery of that legal
marriage, which is the basis of social virtue, forgetting that
Good must voluntarily bind itself in order that Evil may not
go free. The boundless tenderness towards her which had
suddenly revealed itself must be stifled. I could not even
press her hand warmly, lest some unguarded pulse should betray
the secret; I scarcely dared look in her eyes, lest mine
might stab her with the sharpness of my love and my sorrow
in the same glance.

“It was all in vain. Some glance, some word, or touch of
hand, on either side, did come, and the thin disguise was
torn away forever. Then we spoke, for the consolation of
speech seemed less guilty than the agony of silence. In the
moonless nights of the Indian Ocean we walked the deck with
hands secretly clasped, with silent tears on our cheeks, with
a pang in our souls only softened by the knowledge that it
was mutual. Neither of us, I think, then thought of disputing

[figure description] Page 389.[end figure description]

our fate. But as the voyage drew near its end, I was haunted
by wild fancies of escape. I could not subdue my nature
to forego a fulfilment that seemed possible. We might find
a refuge, I thought, in Java, or Celebes, or some of the Indian
Isles, and once beyond the reach of pursuit what was the rest
of the world to us? What was wealth, or name, or station?—
they were hollow sounds to us now, they were selfish cheats,
always. In the perverted logic of passion all was clear and
fair.

“This idea so grew upon me that I was base enough to
propose it to her—I who should have given reverence to that
ignorance of the heart which made her love doubly sacred,
strove to turn it into the instrument of her ruin! She heard
me, in fear, not in indignation. `Do not tempt me!' she
cried, with a pitiful supplication; `think of my children, and
help me to stand up against my own heart!' Thank God I
was not deaf to that cry of weakness; I was armed to meet
resistance, but I was powerless against her own despairing
fear of surrender. Thank God, I overcame the relentless selfishness
of my sex! She took from my lips, that night, the only
kiss I ever gave her—the kiss of repentance, not of triumph.
It left no stain on the purity of her marriage vow. That was
our true parting from each other. There were still two days
of our voyage left, but we looked at each other as if through
the bars of opposite prisons, with a double wall between. Our
renunciation was complete, and any further words would have
been an unnecessary pang. We had a melancholy pleasure in
still being near each other, in walking side by side, in the
formal touch of hands that dared not clasp and be clasped.
This poor consolation soon ceased. The husband was waiting
for her at Calcutta, and I purposely kept my state-room when
we arrived, in order that I might not see him. I was not yet
sure of myself.

“She went to Benares, and afterwards to Meerut, and I
never saw her again. In a little more than a year I heard she
was dead: `the fever of the country,' they said. I was glad

[figure description] Page 390.[end figure description]

of it—death was better for her than her life had been—now,
at least, when that life had become a perpetual infidelity to her
heart. Death purified the memory of my passion, and gave
me, perhaps, a sweeter resignation than if she had first yielded
to my madness. Sad and hopeless as was this episode of my
life, it contained an element of comfort, and restored the
balance which my first disappointment had destroyed. My
grief for her was gentle, tender and consoling, and I never
turned aside from its approaches. It has now withdrawn into
the past, but its influence still remains, in this—that the desire
for that fulfilment of passion, of which life has thus far cheated
me, has not grown cold in my heart.

“There are some natures which resemble those plants that
die after a single blossoming—natures in which one passion
seems to exhaust the capacities for affection. I am not one of
them, yet I know that I possess the virtue of fidelity. I know
that I still wait for the fortune that shall enable me to manifest
it. Do you, as a woman, judge me unworthy to expect that fortune?
You are now acquainted with my history; try me by
the sacred instincts of your own nature, and according to them,
pardon or condemn me. I have revealed to you my dream of
the true marriage that is possible—a dream that prevents me
from stooping to a union not hallowed by perfect love and
faith. Have I forfeited the right to indulge this dream longer?
Would I be guilty of treason towards the virgin confidence of
some noble woman whom God may yet send me, in offering
her a heart which is not fresh in its knowledge, though fresh
in its immortal desires? I pray you to answer me these questions?
Do not blame your own truth and nobility of nature,
which have brought you this task. Blame, if you please, my
selfishness in taking advantage of them.

“I have now told you all I meant to confess, and might here
close. But one thought occurs to me, suggested by the sudden
recollection of the reform to which you have devoted
yourself. I fear that all reformers are too much disposed to
measure the actions and outward habits of the human race,

[figure description] Page 391.[end figure description]

without examining the hidden causes of those actions. There
is some basis in our nature for all general customs, both of
body and mind. The mutual relation of man and woman, in
Society, is determined not by a conscious exercise of tyranny
on the one side, or subjection on the other. Each sex has its
peculiar mental and moral laws, the differences between which
are perhaps too subtle and indefinable to be distinctly drawn,
but they are as palpable in life as the white and red which
neighboring roses draw from the self-same soil. When we
have differed in regard to Woman, I have meant to speak sincerely
and earnestly, out of the knowledge gained by an unfortunate
experience, which, nevertheless, has not touched the
honor and reverence in which I hold the sex. I ask you to
remember this, in case the confidence I have forced upon you
should hereafter set a gulf between us.

“I have deprived myself of the right to make any request,
but whatever your judgment may be, will you let me hear it
from your own lips? Will you allow me to see you once
more? I write to you now, not because I should shrink from
speaking the same words, but because a history like mine is
not always easily or clearly told, and I wish your mind to be
uninfluenced by the sympathy which a living voice might
inspire.

“On Tuesday next you will be free to take your accustomed
walk. May I be your companion again, beside the stream?
But, no: do not write: you will find me there if you consent
to see me. If you do not come, I shall expect the written evidence,
if not of your continued respect, at least of your forgiveness.
But, in any case, think of me always as one man who,
having known you, will never cease to honor Woman.

p713-397 CHAPTER XXXI. IN WHICH THE STRONG-MINDED WOMAN BECOMES WEAK.

[figure description] Page 392.[end figure description]

It did not require the sound of a living voice to inspire
Hannah Thurston with sympathy for the story which she had
just read. Never before had any man so freely revealed to
her the sanctities of his experience of women. Completely
absorbed in the recital, she gave herself up to the first strong
impressions of alternate indignation and pity, without reflecting
upon the deeper significance of the letter. Woodbury's
second episode of passion at first conflicted harshly with the
pure ideal in her own mind; the shock was perhaps greater
to her than the confession of actual guilt would have been to
a woman better acquainted with the world. Having grown
up in the chaste atmosphere of her sect, and that subdued life
of the emotions which the seclusion of the country creates, it
startled her to contemplate a love forbidden by the world, yet
justifying itself to the heart. Nevertheless, the profound pity
which came upon her as she read took away from her the
power of condemnation. The wrong, she felt, was not so much
in the love which had unsuspectedly mastered both, as in the
impulse to indulge rather than suppress it; but having been
suppressed—passion having been purified by self-abnegation
and by death, she could not withhold a tender human charity
even for this feature of the confession.

Woodbury's questions, however, referred to the future, no
less than to the past. They hinted at the possibility of a new
love visiting his heart. The desire for it, he confessed, had not
grown cold. Deceit and fate had not mastered, in him, the

[figure description] Page 393.[end figure description]

immortal yearning: was he unworthy to receive it? “Try
me,” he had written, “by the sacred instincts of your own
nature, and according to them pardon or condemn me.” She
had already pardoned. Perhaps, had she read the same words
coming from a stranger, or as an incident of a romance, she
would have paused and deliberated; her natural severity
would have been slow to relax; but knowing Woodbury as
she had latterly learned to know him, in his frankness, his
manly firmness and justice, his noble consideration for herself,
her heart did not delay the answer to his questions. He had
put her to shame by voluntarily revealing his weakness, while
she had determined that she would never allow him to discover
her own.

Little by little, however, after it became clear that her sympathy
and her charity were justifiable, the deeper questions
which lay hidden beneath the ostensible purpose of his letter
crept to the surface. In her ignorance of the coming confession,
she had not asked herself, in advance, why it should have
been made; she supposed it would be its own explanation.
The reason he had given was not in itself sufficient, but presupposed
something more important which he had not expressed.
No man makes such a confidence from a mere feeling
of curiosity. Simultaneously with this question came another—
why should he fancy that his act might possibly set a gulf
between them? Was it simply the sensitiveness of a nature
which would feel itself profaned by having its secrets misunderstood?
No; a heart thus sensitive would prefer the security
of silence. Was he conscious of a dawning love, and,
doubtful of himself, did he ask for a woman's truer interpretation
of his capacity to give and keep faith? “It is cruel in
him to ask me,” she said to herself; “does he think my heart
is insensible as marble, that I should probe it with thoughts,
every one of which inflicts a wound? Why does he not
send his confession at once to her? It is she who should hear
it, not I! He is already guilty of treason to her, in asking
the question of me!”

[figure description] Page 394.[end figure description]

She put the letter suddenly on the table, and half rose
from her chair, in the excitement of the thought. Then, as if
struck by a stunning blow, she dropped back again. Her face
grew cold and deadly pale, and her arms fell nerveless at her
sides. Her eyes closed, and her breath came in long, labored
sighs. After a few minutes she sat up, placed her elbow on
the table and rested her forehead on her hand. “I am growing
idiotic,” she whispered, with an attempt to smile; “my
brain is giving way—it is only a woman's brain.”

The fire had long been extinct. The room was cold, and a
chill crept over her. She rose, secured the letter and the
book, and went to bed. As the balmy warmth stole over her
frame, it seemed to soften and thaw the painful constriction
of her heart, and she wept herself into a sad quiet. “Oh, if
it should be so,” she said, “I must henceforth be doubly
wretched! What shall I do? I cannot give up the truths
to which I have devoted my life, and they now stand between
my heart and the heart of the noblest man I have ever known.
Yes: my pride is broken at last, and I will confess to myself
how much I honor and esteem him—not love—but even there
I am no longer secure. We were so far apart—how could I
dream of danger? But I recognize it now, too late for him—
almost too late for me!”

Then, again, she doubted every thing. The knowledge had
come too swiftly and suddenly to be accepted at once. He
could not love her; it was preposterous. Until a few days
ago he had thought her cold and severe: now, he acknowledged
her to be true, and his letter simply appealed to that
truth, unsuspicious of the secret slumbering in her heart. He
had spoken of the possibility of a pure and exalted friendship
between the sexes, such as already existed between himself
and Mrs. Blake: perhaps he aimed at nothing more, in this
instance. Somehow, the thought was not so consoling as it
ought properly to have been, and the next moment the skilful
explanation which she had built up tumbled into ruins.

She slept but little, that night, and all the next day went

[figure description] Page 395.[end figure description]

about her duties as if in a dream. She knew that her mother's
eye sometimes rested uneasily on her pale face, and the confession
of her trouble more than once rose to her tongue, but
she resolutely determined to postpone it until the dreaded
crisis was past. She would not agitate the invalid with her
confused apprehensions, all of which, moreover, might prove
themselves to have been needless. With every fresh conflict
in her mind her judgment seemed to become more unsteady.
The thought of Woodbury's love, having once revealed itself
to her, would not be banished, and every time it returned, it
seemed to bring a gentler and tenderer feeling for him into her
heart. On the other hand her dreams of a career devoted to
the cause of Woman ranged themselves before her mental
vision, in an attitude of desperate resistance. “Now is the
test!” they seemed to say: “vindicate your sex, or yield to
the weakness of your heart, and add to its reproach!”

When Monday came, it brought no cessation of the struggle,
but she had recovered something of her usual self-control. She
had put aside, temporarily, the consideration of her doubts;
the deeper she penetrated into the labyrinth, the more she
became entangled, and she made up her mind to wait, with as
much calmness as she could command, for the approaching
solution. The forms of terror, of longing, of defence and of
submission continually made their presence felt by turns, or
chaotically together, but the only distinct sensation she permitted
herself to acknowledge was this: that if her forebodings
were true, the severest trial of her life awaited her. Her
pride forbade her to shrink from the trial, yet every hour
that brought her nearer to it increased her dread of the meeting.

Her mother's strength was failing rapidly, and on this day
she required Hannah's constant attendance. When, at last,
the latter was relieved for the night, her fatigue, combined
with the wakeful torment of the two preceding nights, completely
overpowered her and she slumbered fast and heavily
until morning. Her first waking thought was—“The day is

[figure description] Page 396.[end figure description]

come, and I am not prepared to meet him.” The morning
was dull and windless, and as she looked upon the valley from
her window, a thick blue film enveloped the distant woods, the
dark pines and brown oaks mingling with it indistinctly, while
the golden and orange tints of the maples shone through. Her
physical mood corresponded with the day. The forces of her
spirit were sluggish and apathetic, and she felt that the resistance
which, in the contingency she dreaded, must be made,
would be obstinately passive, rather than active and self-contained.
A sense of inexpressible weariness stole over her.
Oh, she thought, if she only could be spared the trial! Yet,
how easily it might be avoided! She needed only to omit her
accustomed walk: she could write to him, afterwards, and
honor his confidence as it deserved. But an instinct told her
that this would only postpone the avowal, not avert it. If she
was wrong, she had nothing to fear; if she was right, it would
be cowardly, and unjust to him, to delay the answer she must
give.

Her mother had slightly rallied, and when Mrs. Styles
arrived, as usual, early in the afternoon, the invalid could be
safely left in her charge. Nevertheless, Hannah, after having
put on her bonnet and shawl, lingered in the room, with a last,
anxious hope that something might happen which would give
her a pretext to remain.

“Child, isn't thee going?” the widow finally asked.

“Mother, perhaps I had better stay with thee this afternoon?”
was the hesitating answer.

“Indeed, thee shall not do any such thing! Thee's not been
thyself for the last two days, and I know thee always comes
back from thy walks fresher and better. Bring me a handful
of gentians, won't thee?”

“Yes, mother.” She stooped and kissed the old woman's
forehead, and then left the house.

The sky was still heavy and gray, and there was an oppressive
warmth in the air. Crickets chirped loud among the dying
weeds along the garden-palings, and crows cawed hoarsely

[figure description] Page 397.[end figure description]

from the tops of the elms. The road was deserted, as far as
she could see, but the sound of farmers calling to their oxen
came distinctly across the valley from the fields on the eastern
hill. Nature seemed to lie benumbed, in drowsy half-consciousness
of her being, as if under some narcotic influence.

She walked slowly forward, striving to subdue the anxious
beating of her heart. At the junction of the highways, she
stole a glance down the Anacreon road: nobody was to be
seen. Down the other: a farm-wagon was on its way home
from Ptolemy—that was all. To the first throb of relief succeeded
a feeling of disappointment. The walk through the
meadow-thickets would be more lonely than ever, remembering
the last time she had seen them. As she looked towards
their dark-green mounds, drifted over with the downy tufts
of the seeded clematis, a figure suddenly emerged from the
nearest path and hastened towards her across the meadow!

He let down the bars for her entrance and stood waiting
for her. His brown eyes shone with a still, happy light, and
his face brightened as if struck by a wandering sunbeam. He
looked so frank and kind—so cheered by her coming—so unembarrassed
by the knowledge of the confession he had made,
that the wild beating of her heart was partially soothed, and
she grew calmer in his presence.

“Thank you!” he said, as he took her hand, both in greeting
and to assist her over the fallen rails. When he had put them
up, and regained her side, he spoke again: “Shall we not go
on to that lovely nook of yours beside the creek? I have
taken a great fancy to the spot; I have recalled it to my
memory a thousand times since then.”

“Yes, if you wish it,” she answered.

As they threaded the tangled paths, he spoke cheerfully
and pleasantly, drawing her into talk of the autumnal plants,
of the wayward rapids and eddies of the stream, of all sights
and sounds around them. A balmy quiet, which she mistook
for strength, took possession of her heart. She reached the
secluded nook, with a feeling of timid expectancy, it is true,

[figure description] Page 398.[end figure description]

but with scarcely a trace of her former overpowering dread.
There lay the log, as if awaiting them, and the stream gurgled
contentedly around the point, and the hills closed loftily
through blue vapor, up the valley, like the entrance to an
Alpine gorge.

As soon as they were seated, Woodbury spoke. “Can you
answer my questions?”

“You have made that easy for me,” she replied, in a low
voice. “It seems to me rather a question of character than
of experience. A man naturally false and inconstant might
have the same history to relate, but I am sure you are true.
You should ask those questions of your own heart; where
you are sure of giving fidelity, you would commit no treason
in bestowing—attachment.”

She dared not utter the other word in her mind.

“I was not mistaken in you!” he exclaimed. “You have
the one quality which I demand of every man or woman in
whom I confide; you distinguish between what is true in
human nature and what is conventionally true. I must show
myself to you as I am, though the knowledge should give you
pain. The absolution of the sinner,” he added, smiling, “is
already half-pronounced in his confession.”

“Why should I be your confessor?” she asked. “The
knowledge of yourself which you have confided to me, thus
far, does not give me pain. It has not lowered you in my
esteem, but I feel, nevertheless, that your confidence is a gift
which I have done nothing to deserve, and which I ought not
to accept unless—unless I were able to make some return. If
I had answered your questions otherwise, I do not think it
would have convinced you, against your own feelings. With
your integrity of heart, you do not need the aid of a woman
whose experience of life is so much more limited than yours.”

She spoke very slowly and deliberately, and the sentences
seemed to come with an effort. Woodbury saw that her
clear vision had pierced through his flimsy stratagem, and
guessed that she must necessarily suspect the truth. Still, he

[figure description] Page 399.[end figure description]

drew back from the final venture upon which so much depended.
He would first sound the depth of her suspicions.

“No man,” he said, gently, “can be independent of woman's
judgment, without loss to himself. Her purer nature is a
better guide to him than his own clouded instincts. I should
not have attributed a different answer to your true self, but to
the severe ideas of duty which I imagined you to possess.
You were right to suppose that I had already answered for
myself, but can you not understand the joy of hearing it thus
confirmed? Can you not appreciate the happy knowledge
that one's heart has not been opened in vain?”

“I can understand it, though I have had little experience of
such knowledge. But I had not supposed that you needed it,
Mr. Woodbury—least of all from me. We seem to have had
so little in common—”

“Not so!” he interrupted. “Opinions, no matter how
powerfully they may operate to shape our lives, are external
circumstances, compared with the deep, original springs of
character. You and I have only differed on the outside, and
hence we first clashed when we came in contact; but now I
recognize in you a nature for which I have sought long and
wearily. I seek some answering recognition, and in my haste
have scarcely given you time to examine whether any features
in myself have grown familiar to you. I see now that I was
hasty: I should have waited until the first false impression
was removed.”

The memory of Mrs. Waldo's reproach arose in Hannah
Thurston's mind. “Oh no, you mistake me!” she cried. “I
am no longer unjust to you. But you surpass me in magnanimity
as you have already done in justice. You surprised
me by a sacred confidence which is generally accorded only to
a tried friend. I had given you no reason to suppose that I
was a friend: I had almost made myself an enemy.”

“Let the Past be past: I know you now. My confidence
was not entirely magnanimous. It was a test.”

“And I have stood it?” she faltered.

[figure description] Page 400.[end figure description]

“Not yet,” he answered, and his voice trembled into a
sweet and solemn strain, to which every nerve in her body
seemed to listen. “Not yet! You must hear it now. I
questioned you, after you knew the history of my heart, in
order that you might decide for yourself as well as me. Love
purifies itself at each return. My unfortunate experience has
not prevented me from loving again, and with a purity and intensity
deeper than that of my early days, because the passion
was doubted and resisted instead of being received in my
heart as a coveted guest. I am beyond the delusions of youth,
but not beyond the wants of manhood. I described to you,
the other day, on this spot, my dream of marriage. It was
not an ideal picture. Hannah Thurston, I thought of you!”

The crisis had come, and she was not prepared to meet it.
As he paused, she pressed one hand upon her heart, as if it
might be controlled by physical means, and moved her lips,
but no sound came from them.

“I knew you could not have anticipated this,” he continued;
“I should have allowed you time to test me, in return, but
when the knowledge of your womanly purity and gentleness
penetrated me, to the overthrow of all antagonism based on
shallow impressions, I parted with judgment and will. A
power stronger than myself drove me onward to the point I
have now reached—the moment of time which must decide
your fate and mine.”

She turned upon him with a wild, desperate energy in her
face and words. “Why did you come,” she cried, “to drive
me to madness? Was it not enough to undermine the foundations
of my faith, to crush me with the cold, destroying
knowledge you have gained in the world? My life was fixed,
before I knew you; I was sure of myself and satisfied with
the work that was before me: but now I am sure of nothing.
You have assailed me until you have discovered my weakness,
and you cruelly tear down every prop on which I try to lean!
If I could hate you I should regain my strength, but I cannot
do that—you know I cannot!”

[figure description] Page 401.[end figure description]

He did not misinterpret her excitement, which yielded more
than it assailed. “No, Hannah!” he said tenderly, “I would
give you strength, not take it from you—the strength of my
love, and sympathy, and encouragement. I know how these
aims have taken hold upon you: they are built upon a basis
of earnest truth which I recognize, and though I differ
with you as to the ends to be attained, we may both enlighten
each other, and mutual tenderness and mutual respect govern
our relations in this as in all else. Do not think that I would
make my love a fetter. I can trust to your nature working
itself into harmony with mine. If I find, through the dearer
knowledge of you, that I have misunderstood Woman, I will
atone for the error; and I will ask nothing of you but that
which I know you will give—the acknowledgment of the
deeper truth that is developed with the progress of life.”

She trembled from head to foot. “Say no more,” she murmured,
in a faint, hollow voice, “I cannot bear it. Oh, what
will become of me? You are noble and generous—I was
learning to look up to you and to accept your help, and now
you torture me!”

He was pitiless. He read her more truly than she read
herself, and he saw that the struggle must now be fought out
to its end. Her agitation gave him hope—it was the surge
and swell of a rising tide of passion which she resisted with the
last exercise of a false strength. He must seem more cruel still,
though the conflict in her heart moved him to infinite pity.
His voice assumed a new power as he spoke again:

“Hannah,” he said, “I must speak. Remember that I am
pleading for all the remaining years of my life—and, it may
be, for yours. Here is no question of subjection; I offer you
the love that believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth
all things. It is not for me to look irreverently into your
maiden heart: but, judging you, as woman, by myself, as man,
you must have dreamed of a moment like this. You must
have tried to imagine the face of the unknown beloved; you
must have prefigured the holy confidence of love which would

[figure description] Page 402.[end figure description]

force you to give your fate into his hands; you must have
drawn the blessed life, united with his, the community of interest,
of feeling, and of faith, the protecting support on his
side, the consoling tenderness on yours—”

She seized his arm with the hand nearest him, and grasped
it convulsively. Her head dropped towards her breast and
her face was hidden from his view. He gently disengaged the
hand and held it in his own. But he would not be silent, in
obedience to her dumb signal: he steeled his heart against her
pain, and went on:

“You have tried to banish this dream from your heart, but
you have tried in vain. You have turned away from the contemplation
of the lonely future, and cried aloud for its fulfilment
in the silence of your soul. By day and by night it has
clung to you, a torment, but too dear and beautiful to be renounced—”

He paused. She did not withdraw her hand from his,
but she was sobbing passionately. Still, her head was turned
away from him. Her strength was only broken, not subdued.

“Remember,” he said, “that nothing in our lives resembles
the picture which anticipates its coming. I am not the man
of your dreams. Such as I fancy them to be, no man on the
earth would be worthy to represent him. But I can give you
the tenderness, the faith, the support you have claimed from
him, in your heart. Do not reject them while a single voice
of your nature tells you that some portion of your ideal union
may be possible in us. The fate of two lives depends on your
answer: in this hour trust every thing to the true voice of your
heart. You say you cannot hate me?”

She shook her head, without speaking. She was still sobbing
violently.

“I do not ask you, in this moment, if you love me. I cannot
stake my future on a venture which I feel to be perilous.
But I will ask you this: could you love me?”

She made no sign: her hand lay in his, and her face was

[figure description] Page 403.[end figure description]

bent towards her bosom. He took her other hand, and holding
them both, whispered: “Hannah, look at me.”

She turned her head slowly, with a helpless submission, and
lifted her face. Her cheeks were wet with tears, and her
lovely dark-gray eyes, dimmed by the floods that had gushed
from them in spite of herself, met his gaze imploringly. The
strong soul of manhood met and conquered the woman in that
glance. He read his triumph, but veiled his own consciousness
of it—curbed his triumphant happiness, lest she should take
alarm. Softly and gently, he stole one arm around her waist
and drew her to his breast. The violence of her agitation
gradually ceased; then, lifting her head, she withdrew from
his clasp, and spoke, very softly and falteringly, with her eyes
fixed on the ground:

“Yes, Maxwell, it is as I have feared. I will not say that I
love you now, for my heart is disturbed. It is powerless to
act for me, in your presence. I have felt and struggled against
your power, but you have conquered me. If you love me, pity
me also, and make a gentle use of your triumph. Do not
bind me by any promise at present. Be satisfied with the
knowledge that has come to me—that I have been afraid to
love you, because I foresaw how easy it would be. Do not
ask any thing more of me now. I can bear no more to-day.
My strength is gone, and I am weak as a child. Be magnanimous.”

He drew her once more softly to his breast and kissed her
lips. There was no resistance, but a timid answering pressure.
He kissed her again, with the passionate clinging sweetness of
a heart that seals an eternal claim. She tore herself loose from
him and cried with a fiery vehemence: “God will curse you
if you deceive me now! You have bound me to think of you,
day and night, to recall your looks and words, to—oh, Maxwell,
to what have you not bound my heart!”

“I would bind you to no more than I give,” he answered.
“I ask no promise. Let us simply be free to find our way to
the full knowledge of each other. When you can trust your

[figure description] Page 404.[end figure description]

life to me, I will take it in tender and reverent keeping. I
trust mine to you now.”

She did not venture to meet his eyes again, but she took his
outstretched hand. He led her to the edge of the peninsula,
and they stood thus, side by side, while the liquid, tinkling
semitones of the water made a contented accompaniment to
the holy silence. In that silence the hearts of both were busy.
He felt that though his nature had proved the stronger, she
was not yet completely won: she was like a bird bewildered
by capture, that sits tamely for a moment, afraid to try its
wings. He must complete by gentleness what he had begun
by power. She, at the moment, did not think of escape. She
only felt how hopeless would be the attempt, either to advance
or recede. She had lost the strong position in which she had
so long been intrenched, yet could not subdue her mind to the
inevitable surrender.

“I know that you are troubled,” he said at last, and the
considerate tenderness of his voice fell like a balm upon her
heart, “but do not think that you alone have yielded to a
power which mocks human will. I spoke truly, when I said
that the approach of love, this time, had been met with doubt
and resistance in myself. I have first yielded, and thus knowledge
came to me while you were yet ignorant. From that
ignorance the consciousness of love cannot, perhaps, be born
at once. But I feel that the instinct which led me to seek
you, has not been false. I can now appreciate something of
your struggle, which is so much the more powerful than my
own as woman's stake in marriage is greater than man's. Let
us grant to each other an equally boundless trust, and in that
pure air all remaining doubt, or jealousy, or fear of compromised
rights, will die. Can you grant me this much, Hannah?
It is all I ask now.”

She had no strength to refuse. She trusted his manhood
already with her whole heart, though foreseeing what such
trust implied. “It is myself only, that I doubt,” she answered.

[figure description] Page 405.[end figure description]

“Be kind to me,” she added, after a pause, releasing her
hand from his clasp and half turning away: “Consider how I
have failed—how I have been deceived in myself. Another
woman would have been justly proud and happy in my place,
for she would not have had the hopes of years to uproot, nor
have had to answer to her heart the accusation of disloyalty to
humanity.”

“We will let that accusation rest,” he soothed her. “Do
not think that you have failed: you never seemed so strong to
me as now. There can be no question of conflicting power
between two equal hearts whom love unites in the same destiny.
The time will come when this apparent discord will appear
to you as a `harmony not understood.' But, until then,
I shall never say a word to you which shall not be meant to
solve doubt, and allay fear, and strengthen confidence.”

“Let me go back, now, to my mother,” she said. “Heaven
pardon me, I had almost forgotten her. She wanted me to
bring her some gentians. It is very late and she will be
alarmed.”

He led her back through the tangled, briery paths. She
took his offered hand with a mechanical submission, but the
touch thrilled her through and through with a sweetness so
new and piercing, that she reproached herself at each return,
as if the sensation were forbidden. Woodbury gathered for
her a bunch of the lovely fringed gentian, with the short autumn
ferns, and the downy, fragrant silver of the life-everlasting.
They walked side by side, silently, down the meadow,
and slowly up the road to the widow's cottage.

“I will deliver the flowers myself,” said he, as they reached
the gate, “Besides, is it not best that your mother should
know of what has passed?”

She could not deny him. In the next moment they were in
the little sitting-room. Mrs. Styles expected company to tea,
and took her leave as soon as they appeared.

“Mother, will thee see Mr. Woodbury?” said Hannah,

[figure description] Page 406.[end figure description]

opening the door into the adjoining room, where the invalid
sat, comfortably propped up in her bed.

“Thee knows I am always glad to see him,” came the
answer, in a faint voice.

They entered together, and Woodbury laid the flowers on
her bed. The old woman looked from one to another with a
glance which, by a sudden clairvoyance, saw the truth. A
new light came over her face. “Maxwell!” she cried;
“Hannah!”

“Mother!” answered the daughter, sinking on her knees
and burying her face in the bed-clothes.

Tears gushed from the widow's eyes and rolled down her
hollow cheeks. “I see how it is,” she said; “I prayed that
it might happen. The Lord blesses me once more before I
die. Come here, Maxwell, and take a mother's blessing. I
give my dear daughter freely into thy hands.”

Hannah heard the words. She felt that the bond, thus
consecrated by the blessing of her dying mother, dared not be
broken.

p713-412 CHAPTER XXXII. IN WHICH ALL RETREAT IS CUT OFF.

[figure description] Page 407.[end figure description]

“Come back to-morrow, Maxwell,” the Widow Thurston
had said, as he took an affectionate leave of her; “come back,
and let me hear what thee and Hannah have to say. I am too
weak now to talk any more. My life has been so little acquainted
with sudden visitations of joy, that this knowledge
takes hold of my strength. Thee may leave me too, Hannah;
I think I could sleep a little.”

The latter carefully smoothed and arranged the pillows, and
left the invalid to repose. Woodbury was waiting for her, in
the door leading from the sitting-room to the hall. “I am
going home now,” he said; “can you give me a word of hope
and comfort on the way? tell me that you trust me!”

“Oh, I do, I do!” she exclaimed; “Do not mistake either
my agitation or my silence. I believe that if I could once be
in harmony with myself, what I have heard from your lips to-day
would make me happy. I am like my mother,” she
added, with a melancholy smile, “I am more accustomed to
contempt than honor.”

He led her into the hall and closed the door behind them.
He put one arm protectingly around her, and she felt herself
supported against the world. “Hereafter, Hannah,” he whispered,
“no one can strike at you except through me. Good-by
until to-morrow!” He bent his head towards her face,
and their eyes met. His beamed with a softened fire, a dewy
tenderness and sweetness, before which her soul shivered and
tingled in warm throbs of bliss, so quick and sharp as to touch
the verge of pain. A wonderful, unknown fascination drew

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her lips to his. She felt the passionate pressure; her frame
trembled; she heard the door open and close as in a dream,
and blindly felt her way to the staircase, where she sank upon
the lower step and buried her face in her hands.

She neither thought, nor strove to think. The kiss burned
on and on, and every throb of her pulses seemed to break in
starry radiations of light along her nerves. Dissolving rings
of color and splendor formed and faded under her closed lids,
and the blood of a new life rustled in her ears, as if the spirits
of newly-opened flowers were whispering in the summer wind.
She was lapped in a spell too delicious to break—an exquisite
drunkenness of her being, beside which all narcotics would
have been gross. External sounds appealed no more to her
senses; the present, with its unfinished struggles, its torturing
doubts, its prophecies of coming sorrow, faded far away, and
her soul lay helpless and unresisting in the arms of a single
sensation.

All at once, a keen, excited voice, close at hand, called her
name. It summoned her to herself with a start which took
away her breath.

“My dear girl! Good gracious, what's the matter!” exclaimed
Mrs. Waldo, who stood before her. “I saw your
mother was asleep, and I've been hunting you all over the
house. You were not asleep, too?”

“I believe I was trying to think.”

“Bless me, haven't you thought enough yet? I should say,
from the look of your face, that you had seen a ghost—no, it
must have been an angel! Don't look so, my dear, or I shall
be afraid that you are going to die.”

“If I were to die, it would make all things clear,” Hannah
Thurston answered, with a strong effort of self-control; “but
I must first learn to live. Do not be alarmed on my account.
I am troubled and anxious: I am not my old self.”

“I don't wonder at it,” rejoined Mrs. Waldo, tenderly.
“You must see the loss that is coming, as well as the rest
of us.”

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