Do not forsake me!"
As I look back upon this scene, through the coldness and dimness of
so many years, there is still a sensation as if Hollingsworth had
caught hold of my heart, and were pulling it towards him with an
almost irresistible force. It is a mystery to me how I withstood it.
But, in truth, I saw in his scheme of philanthropy nothing but what
was odious. A loathsomeness that was to be forever in my daily work!
A great black ugliness of sin, which he proposed to collect out of a
thousand human hearts, and that we should spend our lives in an
experiment of
transmuting it into virtue! Had I but touched his extended hand,
Hollingsworth's magnetism would perhaps have penetrated me with his
own conception of all these matters. But I stood aloof. I fortified
myself with doubts whether his strength of purpose had not been too
gigantic for his integrity, impelling him to trample on
considerations that should have been paramount to every other.
"Is Zenobia to take a part in your enterprise?" I asked.
"She is," said Hollingsworth.
"She!--the beautiful!--the gorgeous!" I exclaimed. "And how have
you prevailed with such a woman to work in this squalid element?"
"Through no base methods, as you seem to suspect," he answered; "but
by addressing whatever is best and noblest in her."
Hollingsworth was looking on the ground. But, as he often did so,--
generally, indeed, in his habitual moods of thought,--I could not
judge whether it was from any special unwillingness now to meet my
eyes.
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