After all, could he
understand? Was there not a difference which prevented him from
comprehending the motives which, for her, were impelling? For all her
harking back to the primitive and stout defence of its sanity and
truth, did his native philosophy give him the same code which she drew
from her acquired philosophy? Then she stood aside and regarded
herself and the queries she put, and drew apart from them, for they
breathed of treason.
"There is nothing between us, father," she spoke up resolutely. "Mr.
St. Vincent has said nothing, nothing. We are good friends, we like
each other, we are very good friends. I think that is all."
"But you like each other; you like him. Is it in the way a woman must
like a man before she can honestly share her life with him, lose
herself in him? Do you feel with Ruth, so that when the time comes you
can say, 'Thy people are my people, and thy God my God'?"
"N---o. It may be; but I cannot, dare not face it, say it or not say
it, think it or not think it--now. It is the great affirmation. When
it comes it must come, no one may know how or why, in a great white
flash, like a revelation, hiding nothing, revealing everything in
dazzling, blinding truth. At least I so imagine."
Jacob Welse nodded his head with the slow meditation of one who
understands, yet stops to ponder and weigh again.
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