“You can leave it if you will; but if you will not, I must know the reason why.”

“Oh! why will you not see?  I have tried so hard to show you!  I have told you that there is a voice which speaks within my soul, that to it I must listen and that the inward light of which you told me shines upon the path and I must follow it.”

“I could curse that inward light!  Must I be always confronted by the ravings of my youth?  All my life long must the words of my credulous childhood hang about my neck like a millstone?  There is no inward light.  You are living a delusion.  You are restrained by the conventionalities of life and are the slave of the customs of society.  Because the miserable herd of mankind is willing to submit to that galling yoke of marriage, does it follow that you must?  By what right can society demand that men and women who abhor each other should be doomed to pass their lives in hopeless agony?  Against such laws I protest!  I defy those customs.  The path of life is short.  We go this way but once!  Who is to refuse us all the joy that we can find?  There will be sorrow enough, any way!”

“Oh! my friend, do not talk so!  Do not break my heart!  Have pity on me.  I know that it is hard for you; but it is I who have to suffer most.  It is I who must continually exert this terrible resistance which alone keeps us from being swept away.  Have mercy, David!  Spare me a little longer.  Spare me this one day at least.  If any troubled heart had ever need of the rest and peace of such a day as this, it is mine!  Let us give ourselves up to these soothing influences.  Let us wander.  Let us dream and let us love.”

“Love!  This accursed Platonic affection is not love,” he answered savagely.

“David,” she said with an enforced calmness, “you must not speak so.  It will do no good.  There is something in me stronger than this passion.  From the bottom of my soul there has come a sense of duty to a power higher than myself and I will be true to it.  I believe that it is God who speaks.  You may appeal to my mind, and I cannot answer you, but my heart has reasons of its own higher than the reason itself.  It was you who told me this!  You told me when you were so beautiful, so good, so true that I know you were right, and I shall never doubt it.  I am not what I was.  I am, oh! so different.  I cannot understand; but I am different.”

There was in this delicate and ethereal girl who spoke so fearlessly something which held the man, strong in his physical might, in an inexplicable and irresistible awe.  Before a mountain, beside the sea, beneath the stars and in the presence of a virtuous woman, emotions of wonder and reverence possess the souls of men.

Subdued by this influence, David said, with more gentleness:  “But what are we to do?  We cannot live in this way.  We have been forced into a situation from which we must escape, even if we have to act against our consciences.”