"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?