Page:Flute and Violin and Other Kentucky Tales and Romances.djvu/171

Rh. Is it because you are yourself a devil that you tempt me thus?"

"Should you ask me? I am a woman of the world. I live in a city of more than a million souls—in the company of thousands of these women-devils. I see hundreds of them daily. I may be one myself. If you think I am a devil, you ought not to ask me to tell you the truth. You should not listen to me or believe me."

She felt the cruelty of this. It was like replying logically to a child who had earnestly asked to be told something that might wreck its faith and happiness.

The storm was passing. In a few minutes this strange interview would end: he back to his cell again; she back to the world. Already it had its deep influence over them both. She, more than he, felt its almost tragical gravity, and was touched by its pathos. These two young human souls, true and pure, crossing each other's path-way in life thus strangely, now looked into each other's eyes, as two travellers from opposite sides of the world meet and salute and pass in the midst of the desert.

"I shall believe whatever you tell me," he said, with tremulous eagerness.

The occasion lifted her ever-serious nature to the extraordinary; and trying to cast the truth that she wished to teach into the mould which would be most familiar to him, she replied:

"Do you know who are most like you monks in consecration of life? It is the women—the good women of the world. What are your great vows? Are they not poverty, labor, self-denial, chastity, prayer? Well, there is not one of these but is kept in the hearts of good women. Only, you monks keep your vows for