Herminia looked up at him with pleading eyes. Tears just trembled

on the edge of those glistening lashes. "It never occurred to me

to think," she said gently but bravely, "my life could ever end in

anything else but martyrdom. It MUST needs be so with all true

lives, and all good ones. For whoever sees the truth, whoever

strives earnestly with all his soul to be good, must be raised many

planes above the common mass of men around him; he must be a moral

pioneer, and the moral pioneer is always a martyr. People won't

allow others to be wiser and better than themselves, unpunished.

They can forgive anything except moral superiority. We have each

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to choose between acquiescence in the wrong, with a life of ease,

and struggle for the right, crowned at last by inevitable failure.

To succeed is to fail, and failure is the only success worth aiming

at. Every great and good life can but end in a Calvary."

"And I want to save you from that," Alan cried, leaning over her

with real tenderness, for she was already very dear to him. "I

want to save you from yourself; I want to make you think twice

before you rush headlong into such a danger."

"NOT to save me from myself, but to save me from my own higher and

better nature," Herminia answered with passionate seriousness.

"Alan, I don't want any man to save me from that; I want you rather

to help me, to strengthen me, to sympathize with me. I want you to

love me, not for my face and form alone, not for what I share with

every other woman, but for all that is holiest and deepest within

me. If you can't love me for that, I don't ask you to love me; I

want to be loved for what I am in myself, for the yearnings I

possess that are most of all peculiar to me. I know you are

attracted to me by those yearnings above everything; why wish me

untrue to them? It was because I saw you could sympathize with me

in these impulses that I said to myself, Here, at last, is the man

who can go through life as an aid and a spur to me. Don't tell me

I was mistaken; don't belie my belief. Be what I thought you were,

what I know you are. Work with me, and help me. Lift me! raise

me! exalt me! Take me on the sole terms on which I can give myself

up to you."




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