Thelma turned her eyes upon him in wonderment.
"I do not understand you," she said coldly. "Why do you speak of others? No others are interested in what I do? Why should they be? Why should you be? There is no need!"
Mr. Dyceworthy grew slightly excited. He felt like a runner nearing the winning-post.
"Oh, you wrong yourself, my dear Fröken," he murmured softly, with a sickly attempt at tenderness in his tone. "You really wrong yourself! It is impossible,--for me at least, not to be interested in you,--even for our dear Lord's sake. It troubles me to the inmost depths of my soul to behold in you one of the foolish virgins whose light hath been extinguished for lack of the saving oil,--to see you wandering as a lost sheep in the paths of darkness and error, without a hand to rescue your steps from the near and dreadful precipice! Ay, truly! . . . my spirit yearneth for you as a mother for an own babe--fain would I save you from the devices of the evil one,--fain would I--" here the minister drew out his handkerchief and pressed it lightly to his eyes,--then, as if with an effort overcoming his emotion, he added, with the gravity of a butcher presenting an extortionate bill, "but first,--before my own humble desires for your salvation--first, ere I go further in converse, it behoveth me to enter on the Lord's business!"
Thelma bent her head slightly, with an air as though she said: "Indeed; pray do not be long about it!" And, leaning back against the porch, she waited somewhat impatiently.
"The image I have just restored to you," went on Mr. Dyceworthy in his most pompous and ponderous manner, "you say belonged to your unhappy--"
"She was not unhappy," interposed the girl, calmly.
"Ay, ay!" and the minister nodded with a superior air of wisdom. "So you imagine, so you think,--you must have been too young to judge of these things. She died--"
"I saw her die," again she interrupted, with a musing tenderness in her voice. "She smiled and kissed me,--then she laid her thin, white hand on this crucifix, and, closing her eyes, she went to sleep. They told me it was death, since then I have known that death is beautiful!"
Mr. Dyceworthy coughed,--a little cough of quiet incredulity. He was not fond of sentiment in any form, and the girl's dreamily pensive manner annoyed him. Death "beautiful?" Faugh! it was the one thing of all others that he dreaded; it was an unpleasant necessity, concerning which he thought as little as possible. Though he preached frequently on the peace of the grave and the joys of heaven,--he was far from believing in either,--he was nervously terrified of illness, and fled like a frightened hare from the very rumor of any infectious disorder, and he had never been known to attend a death-bed. And now, in answer to Thelma, he nodded piously and rubbed his hands, and said-"Yes, yes; no doubt, no doubt! All very proper on your part, I am sure! But concerning this same image of which I came to speak,--it is most imperative that you should be brought to recognize it as a purely carnal object, unfitting a maiden's eyes to rest upon. The true followers of the Gospel are those who strive to forget the sufferings of our dear Lord as much as possible,--or to think of them only in spirit. The minds of sinners, alas! are easily influenced,--and it is both unseemly and dangerous to gaze freely upon the carven semblance of the Lord's limbs! Yea, truly, it hath oft been considered as damnatory to the soul,--more especially in the cases of women immured as nuns, who encourage themselves in an undue familiarity with our Lord, by gazing long and earnestly upon his body nailed to the accursèd tree."