Bressant

In spite of nursing and a very strong constitution, Bressant's recovery

was slow. The fact was, his mind was restless and disturbed, and

produced a fever in his blood. Large and powerful as he was, his

physical was largely dependent on his mental well-being, as must always

be the case with persons well organized throughout. He would never have

been so muscular and healthy had his life not been an undisturbed and

self-complacent one. These questions of the heart and emotions were not

salutary to his body, however beneficial otherwise.

At the same time, no one is quite himself who is ill, and doubtless

Bressant would have escaped many of his difficulties, and solved others

with comparatively little trouble, if his faculties had not been untuned

by illness. While he was more open to the influx of all these novel

ideas and problems, he was less able to deal with and dispose of them.

So the professor, while encouraged by the observation of his apparent

progress in the direction of human feeling and emotional warmth, was

concerned to find him falling off in recuperative power.

Sophie was largely to blame for it. Bressant was getting to depend too

much upon her society. He brightened when she came in, and was gloomy

when she went out. He liked to talk and argue with her; to dash waves

of logic, impetuous but subtle, against the rock of her pure intuitions

and steady consistency. He was careful not to go too far; though,

indeed, she usually had the best of the encounter. Of course his

knowledge and trained faculties far surpassed Sophie's simple

acquirements and modest learning; but she had a marvelous penetration in

seeing a fallacy, even when she knew not how to expose it; and she

mercilessly pricked many of the conceited bubbles of his understanding.

Doubtless she would have noticed the too prominent position which she

had come to occupy in the invalid's horizon, had not her eyes, so clear

to see every thing else, been blinded by the fact that he, also, was

grown to be of altogether too much importance to her. She never for a

moment imagined that any thing but an abstract and ideal scheme for

benefiting Bressant was actuating her in her intercourse with him. She

proposed to educate him in pure beliefs and true aspirations; to show

him that there was more in life than can be mathematically proved. But

that she could derive other than an immaterial and impersonal enjoyment

from it--oh, no!

This was quixotic and unpractical, if nothing worse. What other means of

imparting spiritual knowledge could a young girl like Sophie have, than

to exhibit to her pupil the structure and workings of her own soul? But

this could not be done with impunity; neither was Bressant a cup, to be

emptied and then refilled with a purer substance. Young men and women

with exalted and ideal views about each other, cannot do better than to

keep out of one another's way. Unless they are prepared to mingle a

great deal of what is earthly with their dreams, they will be apt,

sooner or later, to have a rude awakening.