When Sophie hit upon an idea which seemed to her spiritually beautiful
and harmonious, she was apt to be carried away--sometimes, perhaps, into
deep water. Yet thus, occasionally, did she catch glimpses of higher
truths than a broader and safer wisdom could have attained. Cornelia
took one of the glowing leaves out of her basket, and looked at it.
Perhaps she saw, in the perfect earthly self-sufficiency of its
splendor, something akin to herself.
"I suppose I don't half appreciate your theory, Sophie, though it's
certainly pretty enough. But you're more soul than body, to begin with,
I believe. For my part, I almost think, sometimes, I could get along
without any soul at all, and never feel the least inconvenience. Perhaps
everybody hasn't a soul--only a few favored ones."
"What is it gives you such thoughts, Neelie?" said her sister, in a tone
which, had it not been charged with so ranch depth of feeling, would
have been plaintive. Her gray, profound eyes, from a slight slanting
upward of the brows above them, took on an expression in harmony with
her tone. "I never knew you to have such, until lately."
"I suppose, until lately, I didn't have any thoughts at all." There was
a pause. Sophie looked away over the beautiful valley, but it could not
drive the shadow of anxious and loving sorrow from her face. Cornelia
busied herself selecting leaves from her basket, and arranging them in a
bouquet. Like them, she was more vividly and variously beautiful since
the frost.
"Do you think men's ideas of love, and such things, are as high as
women's?" asked she presently.
"Why shouldn't they be?" answered Sophie, coming back from her reverie
with a sigh. "I'm sure Bressant's are: if they weren't--"
She sank again into thought, and another long silence followed. This
time Cornelia's hands were still, but she watched Sophie closely.
"Well--suppose they weren't--suppose he were to turn out not quite so
high-minded, and all that, as you think him: you would stop loving him,
wouldn't you?"
"Why do you suggest it!" cried Sophie, almost with a sob. She bent down,
resting her face upon her arms, and against the rock. "That question has
come to me once before. How can I know? If he were to degenerate
now--now, after I have told him that I love him--it must be because he
no longer loved me; and I should have no right to love him, then."
Cornelia looked down, for there was a certain light in her eyes which
had no right to be there. When she thought it was subdued, she raised
them again.
"Shouldn't you hate him always afterward? Shouldn't you want to kill
him?" demanded she, in a low voice.
"I should want to kill only the memory of his unworthiness," replied
Sophie, her voice rising and clearing, while she regarded her sister
with a full, bright glance. "As to hating him--I cannot hate any one I
have loved, Neelie." She raised herself up as she spoke, and sat erect.