PAGE 10
Of Those Who Seek
by
The others watched her go in silence.
One of them drew a sigh and said: “I’m going home, too; I don’t feel well.”
“I’ll go with ye,” one of the men said.
“Stay where you are!” said the girl sharply.
* * * * *
Once on the street, the younger girl hurried on the way the stranger had gone. His face seemed before her.
She could see it; she should always see it. It was the face of a young man. A firm chin, a strong mouth with a feminine curve in it, a face with a clear pallor that seemed foreign somehow. But the eyes–oh, the eyes!
They were deep and brown, and filled with an infinite sadness–for her. She felt it, and the knot of pain in the forehead, that was also for her. Something sweet and terrible went out from his presence. A knowledge of infinite space and infinite time and infinite compassion.
No man had ever looked at her like that. There was something divine in the penetrating power of his eyes.
Some way she knew he was not a priest, though his cloak and turban cap looked like it. He seemed like a scholar from some strange land–a man above passion, a man who knew God.
His eyes accused her and pitied her, while they called her.
No smile, no shrinking of lips into a sneer–nothing but pity and wonder, and something else—-
And a voice seemed to say: “You are too good to be there. Follow me.”
As she thought of him he seemed to stand on an immeasurable height looking down at her.
She had laughed at him–O God!–she flushed hot with shame from head to foot–but his eyes had not changed. His lips had kept their pitying droop, and his somber eyes had burned deep into the sacred places of her thought, where something sweet and girlish lay, unwasted and untrampled.
“He called me. He called me.”
* * * * *
Under the trees where the moonlight threw tracing of shadows she came upon him standing, waiting for her. She held out her hand to him like a babe. He was taller than she thought.
He took her hands silently and she grew calm at once. All shame left her. She forgot her city life; she remembered only the sweet, merry life of the village where she was born. The sound of sleigh bells and song, and the lisp of wind in the grass, and songs of birds in the maples came to her.
His voice began softly:
“You are too good and sweet to be so devoured of beasts. In your little Northern home they are waiting for you. To-morrow you will go back to them.”
He placed his hand, which was soft and warm and broad, over her eyes. His voice was like velvet, soft yet elastic.
“When you wake you will hate what you have been. No power can keep you here. You will go back to the simple life from which you should never have departed. You will love simple things and the pleasures of your native place.”
Her face was turned upward, but her eyelids had fallen.
“When you wake you will not remember your life here. You will be a girl again, unstained and ready to begin life without remorse and without accusing memory. When I leave you at your door to-night, you will belong to the kingdom of good and not to the kingdom of evil.”
He dropped her hands and pointed across the park.
“Now go to that gray house. Ring the bell, and you will be housed for the night. Remember you are mine. When the bell rings you will ‘wake.'”
She moved away without looking back–moved mechanically like one still in sleep.
The man watched her until the door opened and admitted her; then he passed on into the shadow of the narrow street.
And this the listener gravely asked:
“One was chosen, the other left. Were the others less in need of grace?”