"I have brought you a book," she said, smiling and laying her cheek against a rose newly placed by his Testament.For a moment she scrutinized him with intense penetration.Then she added:
"Will you read it wisely?"
"I will if I am wise," he replied laughing."Thank you," and he held out his hand for the book eagerly.
She clasped it more tightly with the gayest laugh of irresolution.Her colour deepened.A moment later, however, she recovered the simple and noble seriousness to which she had grown used as the one habit of her life with him.
"You should have read it long ago," she said."But it is not too late for you.Perhaps now is your best time.It is a good book for a man, wounded as you have been; and by the time you are well, you will need it more than you have ever done.Hereafter you will always need it more."She spoke with partly hidden significance, as one who knows life may speak to one who does not.
He eyed the book despairingly.
"It is my old Bible of manhood," she continued with rich soberness, " part worthless, part divine.Not Greek manhood--nor Roman manhood: they were too pagan.Not Semitic manhood: that--in its ideal at least--was not pagan enough.But something better than any of these--something that is everything."The subject struck inward to the very heart's root of his private life.He listened as with breath arrested.
"We know what the Greeks were before everything else," she said resolutely:
" hey were physical men: we think less of them spiritually in any sense of the idea that is valued by us and of course we do not think of them at all as gentlemen: that involves of course the highest courtesy to women.The Jews were of all things spiritual in the type of their striving.Their ancient system, and the system of the New Testament itself as it was soon taught and passed down to us, struck a deadly blow at the development of the body for its own sake--at physical beauty: and the highest development of the body is what the race can never do without.It struck another blow at the development of taste--at the luxury and grace of the intellect: which also the race can never do without.But in this old book you will find the starting-point of a new conception of ideal human life.It grew partly out of the pagan; it grew partly out of the Christian; it added from its own age something of its own.Nearly every nation of Europe has lived on it ever since--as its ideal.The whole world is being nourished by that ideal more and more.It is the only conception of itself that the race can never fall away from without harm, because it is the ideal of its own perfection.You know what I mean?" she asked a little imperiously as though she were talking to a green boy.
"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.
