The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1888-06-09

would have induced him to gave its real
name of shyness; and of pleasure at the
thought of seeing again the face which had
been much in his thoughts since the eve
ming before. He was shown up stairs on
reaching the gloomly-looking house into a
room of which the only characteristics he
could distinctly remember afterward were a
strong scent of yiolets and long, low
chintz covered couch near the fire, in the
corner of which Mary Chaston was sitting
reading. She rose to meet him, and as she
came nearer he saw that some of the violets
white ones-were in her dress. They
sat down, and she thanked him for his
help with sort of gracious earnestness
which made him feel it impossible to find
strong enough words to disclaim the idea
of having done anything worthy of it.
The spring evenings were not very long
yet; in the rather dark room the freight
became quickly brighter than the daylight,
and this, perhaps, helped to make DIR.
Walter feel it utterly impossible to do or
say anything conventional. The feeling
grew stronger every moment; he could, it
seemed to him, take up none of the ordi-
nary subjects with which he was accus-
toned to "make conversation" to the women
he met on the rare occasions when he dined
out. His answers to her were very little
more than monosyllabic, and yet he did
not want to go; this woman made him long
to talk to her, and at last, in desperation,
he did what he had determined nothing
should induce him to do with her-he be-
gan to talk of the case over which they
first met. He touched on it only at first;
but she took it up at once, and in minute
or two she had reused herself from her
half.leaning position with quick, ener-
getic movement, and every line of her still
white face was distinct in the freight.
Very earnestly she answered his half
hesitating sentences and to DIR. Walters
own intense surprise, when he came to think
of it afterward, they had in moment be-
gun discussion on disputed scientific
point which was just then exciting the
medical world. DIR. Walter forgot utterly
that he was talking to q woman only. Il
was as much as he could do to maintain
the ground on which, when he had curso-
rily thought over the point on seeing it
alluded to in medical paper, he had
thought himself so firmly established. He
found he had met woman who knew far
more about this particular point, far more
about things not technical than he himself
did; and when their argument ended he
frankly owned himself wrong. The ten
minutes it had taken had made them know
each other better than ten months Of ordi-
nary intercourse; and when she went on to
talk Of professional difficulties and discourage
ments, and the rare success which, to her,
seemed amply to make up for them, it did
not once seem strange that she should be
saying all this to him; he only felt as if he
suddenly saw new world-a world where
the glory of their common work lay, not in
the intellectual triumphs it brought them,
but in its .power to tighten some of the
heaviest darkness in life. The words
which, as she said them, brought faint
color into Mary Chaston's face-''The pro.
fession seems to me most nearly to touch
the ideal life--one in which it Is possible
to live for those who are here with u.s.
so filed his mind that he could say nothing
to her in answer, while she walked toward
bookcase for scientific book she had
promised to lend him. He took it, thanked
her, and said goodbye-still thinking.
On reaching his own room the first
thing that caught his eye lying under his
reading lamp was cynical novel he had
been reading late the night before. Two
or three of the cutting epigrammatic SEN
tences he had enjoyed then came before
his mind now; and feeling as if the book
represented the hardness he had never
before recognized in himself, he flung it
with furious impulse into the are,
For long after this his work seemed to
him impossible almost; the ideal Mary
Chaston's words had shown him was al
ways with him, and in the light of it the
self-contempt with which he looked at his
own life strengthened daily. At intervals
the hard, narrow view which had been his
for all these years aeened enough, but
oalg az intervala. He could not settle
again into the callousness from which he
had been reused, and as each days work
forced on him the knowledge that his view
Of life and the higher one that she had
shown him were incompatible, the con-
fict, from being half unconscious, became
intensely earnest.