And yet, once more, when he respected her so much for the sacrifice

she was willing to make for humanity, would it be right for him to

stand in her way, to deter her from realizing her own highest

nature? She was Herminia just because she lived in that world of

high hopes, just because she had the courage and the nobility to

dare this great thing. Would it be right of him to bring her down

from that pedestal whereon she stood so austere, and urge upon her

that she should debase herself to be as any other woman,--even as

Ethel Waterton? For the Watertons had brought him there to propose

to Ethel.

For hours he tossed and turned and revolved these problems. Rain

beat on the leaded panes of the Waterton dormers. Day dawned, but

no light came with it to his troubled spirit. The more he thought

of this dilemma, the more profoundly he shrank from the idea of

allowing himself to be made into the instrument for what the world

would call, after its kind, Herminia's shame and degradation. For

even if the world could be made to admit that Herminia had done

what she did from chaste and noble motives,--which considering what

we all know of the world, was improbable,--yet at any rate it could

never allow that he himself had acted from any but the vilest and

most unworthy reasons. Base souls would see in the sacrifice he

made to Herminia's ideals, only the common story of a trustful

woman cruelly betrayed by the man who pretended to love her, and

would proceed to treat him with the coldness and contempt with

which such a man deserves to be treated.

As the morning wore on, this view of the matter obtruded itself

more and more forcibly every moment on Alan. Over and over again

he said to himself, let come what come might, he must never aid and

abet that innocent soul in rushing blindfold over a cliff to her

own destruction. It is so easy at twenty-two to ruin yourself for

life; so difficult at thirty to climb slowly back again. No, no,

holy as Herminia's impulses were, he must save her from herself; he

must save her from her own purity; he must refuse to be led astray

by her romantic aspirations. He must keep her to the beaten path

trod by all petty souls, and preserve her from the painful crown of

martyrdom she herself designed as her eternal diadem.

Full of these manful resolutions, he rose up early in the morning.

He would be his Herminia's guardian angel. He would use her love

for him,--for he knew she loved him,--as a lever to egg her aside

from these slippery moral precipices.




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024