By degrees she told me much of what had pa.s.sed at that interview. She seemed to have had no thought of anything but her desire to see him, and have her mind set at rest, until she found herself face to face with him, and then she was a.s.sailed by all kinds of doubts and fears; but he had put her at her ease in five minutes--and in five minutes more she had forgotten everything in the rapid change of ideas, the delightful intellectual contest and communion, which had made his companionship everything to her. She did just remember to ask him why he had not answered her first letter.
He searched about amongst a pile of newly-arrived doc.u.ments on his writing table. "There it is," he said, showing her the letter covered with stamps and postmarks. "It only arrived this morning--just in time, though, to speak for itself. I was abroad when you wrote, and it was sent after me, and has followed me from place to place as you see, so that I got your second letter first. You might have known there was some mistake."
"Pardon me," Ideala answered. "I ought to have known."
And then she had looked up at him and smiled, and never another doubt had occurred to her.
"But, Ideala," I said to her, "you used the word "immoral" just now.
You were talking at random, surely? You are nervous. For heaven"s sake collect yourself, and tell me what all this means."
"No, I am not nervous," she answered. "See! my hand is quite steady. It is you who are trembling. I am calm now, and relieved, because I have told you. But, oh! I am so sorry to give you pain."
"I do not yet understand," I answered, hoa.r.s.ely.
"He wants me to give up everything, and go to him," she said; "but he would not accept my consent until he had explained, and made me understand exactly what I was doing. "The world will consider it an immoral thing," he said, "and so it would be if the arrangement were not to be permanent. But any contract which men and women hold to be binding on themselves should be sufficient now, and will be sufficient again, as it used to be in the old days, provided we can show good cause why any previous contract should be broken. You must believe that. You must be thoroughly satisfied now. For if your conscience were to trouble you afterwards--your troublesome conscience which keeps you busy regretting nearly everything you do, but never warns you in time to stop you--if you were to have any scruples, then there would be no peace for either of us, and you had better give me up at once.""
"And what did you say, Ideala?"
"I said, perhaps I had. I was beginning to be frightened again."
"And how did it end?"
"He made me go home and consider."
"Yes. And what then?" I demanded impatiently.
"And next day he came to me--to know my decision--and--and--I was satisfied. I cannot live without him." I groaned aloud. What was I to say? What could I do? An arrangement of this sort is carefully concealed, as a rule, by the people concerned, and denied if discovered; but here were a lady and gentleman prepared, not only to take the step, but to justify it--under somewhat peculiar circ.u.mstances, certainly--and carefully making their friends acquainted with their intention beforehand, as if it were an ordinary engagement.
I knew Ideala, and could understand her being over-persuaded. Something of the kind was what I had always feared for her. But, Lorrimer--what sort of a man was he? I own that I was strongly prejudiced against him from the moment she p.r.o.nounced his name, and all she had told me of him subsequently only confirmed the prejudice.
"Why was he not there that day to receive you?" I asked at last.
"I don"t know," she said. "I quite forgot about that. And I suppose he forgot too," she added, "since he never told me."
"Oh, Ideala!" I exclaimed, "how like you that is! It is most important that you should know whether he intended to slight you on that occasion or not. It is the key to his whole action in this matter."
"But supposing he did mean to be rude? I should have to forgive him, you know, because I have been rude to him--often. He does not approve of my conduct always, by any means," she placidly a.s.sured me.
"And does he, of all people in the world, presume to sit in judgment on you?" I answered, indignantly. "I always thought _you_ the most extraordinary person in the world, Ideala, until I heard of this-- _gentleman_."
"Hush!" she protested, as if I had blasphemed. "You must not speak of him like that. He _is_ a gentleman--as true and loyal as you are yourself. And he is everything to me."
But these a.s.surances were only what I had expected from Ideala, and in no way altered my opinion of Mr. Lorrimer. I knew Ideala"s peculiar conscience well. She might do what all the world would consider wrong on occasion; but she would never do so until she had persuaded herself that wrong was right--for _her_ at all events.
"He may be everything to you, but he has lowered you, Ideala," I resumed, thinking it best not to spare her.
"I was degraded when I met him."
"Circ.u.mstances cannot degrade us until they make us act unworthily," I rejoined.
"Oh, no, he has not lowered me," she persisted; "quite the contrary. I have only begun to know the difference between right and wrong since I met him, and to understand how absolutely necessary for our happiness is right-doing, even in the veriest trifle. And there is one thing that I must always be grateful to him for--I can pray now. But I belied myself to him nevertheless. He asked me if I ever prayed, and I was shy; I could not tell him, because I only prayed for him. It was easier to say that sometimes I reviled. Ah! why can we not be true to ourselves?"
"But I can"t always pray," she went on sorrowfully; "only sometimes; generally when I am in church. The thought of him comes over me then, and a great longing to have him beside me, kneeling, with his heart made tender, and his soul purified and uplifted to G.o.d as mine is, possesses me--a longing so great that it fills my whole being, and finds a voice: "My G.o.d! my G.o.d! give him to me!""
""Angels of G.o.d in heaven! give him to me! give him to me!"" I answered, bitterly.
"Yes, I remember," she rejoined, "I said it in my arrogant ignorance. I did not understand, and this is different."
"It is always _different_ in our own case," I answered. "Do you remember that pa.s.sage Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes from Lord Bacon: "Moral qualities rule the world, but at short distances the senses are despotic"? it seems to me that when you call upon G.o.d in that spirit you are worshipping Him with your senses only."
"Then I believe it is possible to make the senses the means of saving the soul at critical times," she answered; "and at all events I know this, that I more earnestly desire to be a good woman now than I ever did before."
"It would be a dangerous doctrine," I began.
"Only in cases where the previous moral development had not been of a high order," she interrupted. I felt it was useless to pursue that part of the subject, so I waited a little, and then I said: "Am I to understand, then, that you are going to give up your position in society, and all your friends, for the sake of this one man, who probably does not care for you, who certainly does not respect you, and of whom you know nothing? Verily, he has gained an easy victory! But, of course, you know now what his object has been from the first."
"I know what you mean," she answered, indignantly; "but you are quite wrong; he does care for me. And if I give up my position in society for his sake, he is worth it, and I am content. And it is my own doing, too. I know that there cannot be one law for me and another for all the other women in the world, and if I break through a social convention I am prepared to abide by the consequences. Do you want to make me believe that his sympathy was pretended, that he deliberately planned-- something I have no word to express--and would have carried out his plan absolutely in cold blood, without a spark of affection for me? It would be hard to believe it of any man; it is impossible to believe it of him. He is a man of strong pa.s.sions, if you will, but of n.o.ble purpose; and if I make a sacrifice for him, he will be making one for me also. He may have been betrayed at times by grief, or other mental pain, which weakened his moral nature for the moment, and left him at the mercy of bad impulses; but I can believe such impulses were isolated, and any action they led him into was bitterly repented of; and no one will ever make me alter my conviction that I wronged him when I doubted him, even for a moment."
"This is all very well, Ideala," I said, trying not to irritate her by direct opposition, "if you appeared to him as you appear to me. Do you think you did? Was there anything in your conduct that might have given him a low estimate of your character to begin with? Anything that might have led him to doubt your honesty, and think, when you made your confession, that you were trying to get up a little play in which you intended him to take a leading part? That you merely wished to ease your mind from some inevitable sense of shame in wrong-doing by finding an excuse for yourself to begin with--an excuse by which you would excite his interest and sympathy, and save yourself from his contempt?"
"Oh!" she exclaimed, "could he--could any one--think such a thing possible?"
"Such things are being done every day, Ideala, and a man of the world would naturally be on his guard against deception. If he thought he was being deceived, do you think it likely he would feel bound to be scrupulous?"
"But he _did_ believe in me," she declared, pa.s.sionately.
"He pretended to; it was part of the play. You see he only kept it up until he thoroughly understood you, and then his real feelings appeared, and he was rude to you. For I call his absence on that occasion distinctly rude, and intentionally so too, since he sent no apology."
"He was only rude to me to save me from myself, then, as Lancelot was rude to Elaine," she answered.
"Or is it not just possible that he was disappointed when he found you better than he had supposed? that he felt he had wasted his time for nothing, and was irritated----"
She interrupted me. "I forgive you," she said, "because you do not know him. But I shall never convince you. You are prejudiced. You do not think ill of me: why do you think ill of him?"
I made no answer, and she was silent for a little. Then she began again, recurring to the point at issue:
"If he did slight me on that occasion," she said--"and I maintain that he did not--but if he did, it was accidentally done."
"The evidence is against him," I answered, drily.
"Many innocent persons have suffered because it was," she said, with confidence.
"You are infatuated," I answered, roughly. And then my heart sent up an exceeding great and bitter cry: "Ideala! Ideala! how did it ever come to this?"
She was silent. But her eyes were bright once more, her figure was erect, there was new life in her--I could see that--and never a doubt.
She was satisfied. She was happy.
"Must I give you up?" she said at last, tentatively.
"No, you must give him up," I answered.