When Ruth had ended, she said slowly: “You speak very earnestly. You do your mountains justice; but each world has its code. It is good for some men to be followed by a slow hatred--it all depends on themselves. There are some who wish to meet their fate and its worst, and others who would forget it. The latter are in the most danger always.”
She stepped forward slightly, so that her feet also were within the sunlight. The other saw this; it appeared to interest her. Ruth looked--as such a girl can look--with incredible sincerity into Mrs. Falchion’s eyes, and said: “Oh, if I knew such a man, I would be sorry--sorry for him; and if I also knew that his was only a mistake and not a crime, or, if the crime itself had been repented of, and atonement made, I would beg some one--some one better than I--to pray for him. And I would go to the person who had his life and career at disposal, and would say to her, if it were a woman, oh, remember that it is not he alone who would suffer! I would beg that woman--if it were a woman--to be merciful, as she one day must ask for mercy.”
The girl as she stood there, all pale, yet glowing with the white light of her pain, was beautiful, noble, compelling. Mrs. Falchion now rose also. She was altogether in the sunlight now. From the piano in the next room came a quick change of accompaniment, and a voice was heard singing, as if to the singer’s self, ‘Il balen del suo sorris’. It is hard to tell how far such little incidents affected her in what she did that afternoon; but they had their influence. She said: “You are altruistic--or are you selfish, or both?... And should the woman--if it were a woman--yield, and spare the man, what would you do?”
“I would say that she had been merciful and kind, and that one in this world would pray for her when she needed prayers most.”
“You mean when she was old,”--Mrs. Falchion shrank a little at the sound of her own words. Now her careless abandon was gone; she seemed to be following her emotions. “When she was old,” she continued, “and came to die? It is horrible to grow old, except one has been a saint--and a mother.... And even then--have you ever seen them, the women of that Egypt of which we spoke--powdered, smirking over their champagne, because they feel for an instant a false pulse of their past?--See how eloquent your mountains make me!--I think that would make one hard and cruel; and one would need the prayers of a churchful of good women, even as good--as you.”