"Never!" answered Hilda, looking at the matter through the clear crystal

medium of her own integrity. "This thing, as regards its causes, is all

a mystery to me, and must remain so. But there is, I believe, only one

right and one wrong; and I do not understand, and may God keep me from

ever understanding, how two things so totally unlike can be mistaken for

one another; nor how two mortal foes, as Right and Wrong surely are, can

work together in the same deed. This is my faith; and I should be led

astray, if you could persuade me to give it up."

"Alas for poor human nature, then!" said Kenyon sadly, and yet half

smiling at Hilda's unworldly and impracticable theory. "I always felt

you, my dear friend, a terribly severe judge, and have been perplexed to

conceive how such tender sympathy could coexist with the remorselessness

of a steel blade. You need no mercy, and therefore know not how to show

any."

"That sounds like a bitter gibe," said Hilda, with the tears springing

into her eyes. "But I cannot help it. It does not alter my perception of

the truth. If there be any such dreadful mixture of good and evil as

you affirm,--and which appears to me almost more shocking than

pure evil,--then the good is turned to poison, not the evil to

wholesomeness."

The sculptor seemed disposed to say something more, but yielded to the

gentle steadfastness with which Hilda declined to listen. She grew very

sad; for a reference to this one dismal topic had set, as it were, a

prison door ajar, and allowed a throng of torturing recollections to

escape from their dungeons into the pure air and white radiance of

her soul. She bade Kenyon a briefer farewell than ordinary, and went

homeward to her tower.

In spite of her efforts to withdraw them to other subjects, her thoughts

dwelt upon Miriam; and, as had not heretofore happened, they brought

with them a painful doubt whether a wrong had not been committed on

Hilda's part, towards the friend once so beloved. Something that Miriam

had said, in their final conversation, recurred to her memory, and

seemed now to deserve more weight than Hilda had assigned to it, in her

horror at the crime just perpetrated. It was not that the deed looked

less wicked and terrible in the retrospect; but she asked herself

whether there were not other questions to be considered, aside from that

single one of Miriam's guilt or innocence; as, for example, whether a

close bond of friendship, in which we once voluntarily engage, ought to

be severed on account of any unworthiness, which we subsequently detect

in our friend. For, in these unions of hearts,--call them marriage,

or whatever else,--we take each other for better for worse. Availing

ourselves of our friend's intimate affection, we pledge our own, as

to be relied upon in every emergency. And what sadder, more desperate

emergency could there be, than had befallen Miriam? Who more need the

tender succor of the innocent, than wretches stained with guilt! And

must a selfish care for the spotlessness of our own garments keep us

from pressing the guilty ones close to our hearts, wherein, for the very

reason that we are innocent, lies their securest refuge from further

ill?




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