Bressant

"Well, you're a strange girl!" said Cornelia, who was a little confused.

"I don't see how you can ever be either happy or unhappy. Nothing human

seems to have any hold upon you."

"I'm very human," returned Sophie, shaking her head. "There are some

things, I think, would soon drive me out of the world, if God wore to

send them to me."

The idea of death, when brought home to Cornelia, never failed to affect

her. If she had been planning the destruction of an enemy, she would

have wept bitterly at the sight of that enemy's dead body; nay, even at

a vivid account of his death. Sophie's words brought tears to her eyes

at once, and a quaver into her voice.

"Don't--please don't talk that way, dear; it isn't so easy to die as you

think, I'm sure. The idea of dying because anybody was wicked! It's only

because you've been ill, and have got into the habit of expecting to

die, that you have such ideas--isn't it? don't you think so? You'll stop

feeling so as soon as you're well again--won't you?"

"Perhaps," said Sophie, with, it may be, a particle of satire in her

smile.

They now got up from the rock and began to descend toward the Parsonage.

Sophie stepped with a quick but careful precision, never slipping or

missing her footing. Cornelia made short rushes, and daring jumps, often

coining near to fall. Her mind was a Babel of new thoughts; or rather

one idea spoke with many tongues, and made much disturbance.

The greatest crimes are often perpetrated by those who, in their own

phrase, follow the lead of the moment, and let things take their course.

Things never take their own course, in a certain sense; what we do, and

say, and think, creates circumstances and shapes results. There seems

always to be a choice of paths. We profess--and believe--that we are

neutral; that we surrender ourselves to the chance of the current. But

let an evil hope--a dangerous wish--once enter our minds: something we

venture only half to hint to ourselves in the non-committal whispers of

a craven, unacknowledged longing-working secretly within us, it will act

upon our course as a rudder, which, hidden beneath the water, steers the

vessel inevitably toward a certain goal. Perhaps, when the current has

become too swift, and the rudder, clamped in one fatal position, cannot

be turned, we may realize, and recoil; but now, indeed, we follow the

lead of the moment; now, beyond a doubt, we let things take their

course: we are hurried on irresistibly; that which we dared not openly

to name, or fairly to face, now looms awfully above us--an irrevocable,

accomplished fact.

Beyond doubt it would have been safer to have steadily and fearlessly

kept the end in view from the outset: for the full horror of it would

have been visible while yet there was time to change our minds. Few

people have the nerve to jump from a precipice, or stand in way of a

railway-engine, without first shutting their eyes, and perhaps their

ears also.