"What do you mean?" he asked wonderingly. She had never spoken to him in
this way. Her mood, the passionate, beautiful, embarrassed stress behind all
this, was a bewildering revelation.
"I mean," she said, "that first of all things in this world a man must be a
man--with all the grace and vigour and, if possible, all the beauty of the
body. Then he must be a gentleman--with all the grace, the vigour, the good
taste of the mind. And then with both of these--no matter what his creed,
his dogmas, his superstitions, his religion--with both of these he must try
to live a beautiful life of the spirit."
He looked at her eagerly, gratefully.
"You will find him all these," she resumed, dropping her eyes before his
gratitude which was much too personal. "You wil1 find all these in this
book: here are men who were men; here are men who were gentlemen; and here
are gentlemen who served the unfallen life of the spirit."
She kept her eyes on the book. Her voice had become very grave and reverent.
She had grown more embarrassed, but at last she went on as though resolved
to finish: "So it ought to help you! It will help you. It will help you to be what you
are trying to be. There are things here that you have sought and have never
found. There are characters here whom you have wished to meet without ever
having known that they existed. If you will always live by what is best in
this book, love the best that it loves, hate what it hates, scorn what it
scorns, follow its ideals to the end of the world, to the end of your
life --"
"Oh, but give it to me!" he cried, lifting himself impulsively on one elbow
and holding out his hand for it.
She came silently over to the bedside and placed it on his hand. He studied
the title wonderingly, wonderingly turned some of the leaves, and at last,
smiling with wonder still, looked up at her. And then he forgot the
book--forgot everything but her.
Once upon a time he had been walking along a woodland path with his eyes
fixed on the ground in front of him as was his studious wont. In the path
itself there had not been one thing to catch his notice: only brown
dust--little stones--a twig--some blades of withered grass.
Then all at once out of this dull, dead motley of harmonious nothingness, a
single gorgeous spot had revealed itself, swelled out, and disappeared: a
butterfly had opened its wings, laid bare their inside splendours, and
closed them again--presenting to the eye only the adaptive, protective,
exterior of those marvellous swinging doors of its life. He had wondered
then that Nature could so paint the two sides of this thinnest of all
canvases: the outside merely daubed over that it might resemble the dead and
common and worthless things amid which the creature had to live--a
masterwork of concealment; the inside designed and drawn and coloured with
lavish fullness of plan, grace of curve, marvel of hue--all for the purpose
of the exquisite self revelation which should come when the one great
invitation of existence was sought or was given.
As the young school-master now looked up--too quickly--at the woman who
stood over him, her eyes were like a butterfly's gorgeous wings that for an
instant had opened upon him and already were closing--closing upon the
hidden splendours of her nature--closing upon the power to receive upon
walls of beauty all the sunlight of the world.