For myself----" He shrugged his shoulders, just about to say conventionally, flippantly, that he was a sad, worthless fellow, but in some way her sincerity made him sincere, and he finished: "I do not know that I have done anything to forfeit them." He supposed, as soon as he had said the words, that she would have a theological objection to this view, and oppose it by rote; but there was nothing of disapproval in her mien; there was even a gleam of greater kindliness for him in her eye, and she said, not in answer, but as making a remark by the way: "That is just as I supposed when I asked you to come.

You are like the young ruler, who could not have been conceited because our Lord felt greatly attracted to him." Before this Caius had had a pleasing consciousness, regarding himself as an interesting stranger talking to a handsome and interested woman.

Now he had wit enough to perceive that her interest in him never dipped to the level of ordinary social relationships.

He felt a sense of remoteness, and did not even blush, though knowing certainly that satire, although it was not in her mind, was sneering at him from behind the circumstance.
The lady went right on, almost without pause, taking up the thread of her argument: "But when the angels whisper to us that the best blessings of earth and heaven are humility and faith and the sort of love that does not seek its own, do we get up at once and spend our time learning these things?
or do we just go on as before, and think our own way good enough?
'We are fools and worse, and will not take a telling.'" A smile broke upon her lip now for the first time as she looked at him.
"'Pig-headed!'" she said.
Caius had seen that smile before.

It passed instantly, and she sat before him with grave, unruffled demeanour; but all his thoughts and feelings seemed a-whirl.