"
"Has that been your experience?" Drayton asked, with a smile.
"Oh, I was speaking generally," she said, looking down.
"It may be the truth; but if so, it is a perilous thing to be loved."
"Perilous?"
"Why, yes. How can the lover be sure that he really is what his
mistress takes him for? After all, a man has and is nothing in himself.
His life, his love, his goodness, such as they are, flow into him from
his Creator, in such measure as he is capable or desirous of receiving
them. And he may receive more at one time than at another. How shall he
know when he may lose the talismanic virtue that won her love--even
supposing he ever possessed it?"
"I don't know how to argue," said Mary Leithe; "I can only feel when a
thing is true or not--or when I think it is--and say what I feel."
"Well, I am wise enough to trust the truth of your feeling before any
argument."
This assertion somewhat disconcerted Mary Leithe, who never liked to be
confronted with her own shadow, so to speak. However, she seemed
resolved on this occasion to give fuller utterance than usual to what
was in her mind; so, after a pause, she continued, "It is not only how
much we are capable of receiving from God, but the peculiar way in
which each one of us shows what is in him, that makes the difference in
people.
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