would be no use for you to read: I couldn't understand--I couldn't attend to your voice and the book at the same time."
"We'd better wait, then," said Sophie, turning her clear, gray eyes upon him with an expression of demure satire. "By-and-by, perhaps, it won't have such a distracting effect upon you--when you come to know me better. If not, I must keep away altogether."
Bressant's forehead grew red with sudden temper. He felt reproved, but was not prepared to acknowledge that he had merited it.
"You're very generous of your voice!" exclaimed he, resentfully. "It's your fault, not mine, that it's agreeable. You're not so kind as your tone is."
"I don't mean to be unkind," said she, more gently, looking down. "You don't seem to see the difference between unkindness and--what I said."
"What is the difference?" demanded he, taking her up.
Sophie paused a few moments, compassionating this great, willful boy, and wondering what she could do for him. He had saved her father's life, thereby imperilling his own, and disabling himself, and she could not but admire and thank him for it. But his manner puzzled and annoyed her, and was an obstacle in the way of her would-be helpfulness.
"You wouldn't ask that question, I think, if you'd had sisters, or a mother," she said, at last. "I suppose you've lived only with men. But you must learn how to treat young women from your own sense of what is delicate and true."
Bressant stared and was silent: and Sophie herself was surprised at the authoritative tone she was assuming toward a bearded man whom she had never met before. But it was impossible to associate with Bressant without either yielding to him, or, at least, behaving differently from at other times, in one way or another. He was a magnet that drew from people things unsuspected by themselves.
The pause was finally broken by the young man's accepting the situation with a grace, and even docility, which was nearly too much for Sophie's gravity.
"If you'll read, I will listen and understand it: you'd better try the Bible. I have a great deal of work to do upon that, still: you'll find one on the table by the window."
She got the book, with whose contents she was considerably better acquainted than was the divinity student, and sat down to read, marveling at the oddness of the situation; while he lay apparently absorbed in the cracks on the ceiling. By degrees--for having carried her point she could not help being more gracious--she began to allow a little embroidery of conversation to weave itself about the sacred text She spoke to Bressant about such simple and ordinary matters as went to make up her life--the books she had read, the people she knew, the country round about, a few of her more inward thoughts. He listened, and said no more than enough to show he was attentive; sometimes making her laugh by the shrewdness of his questions, and the quaintness of his remarks.
But he said nothing more to bring a grave look into the eyes of his young nurse; and she, finding him so gentle and boyish, and withal manly and profound, chatted on with more confidence and freedom; and, being gifted with fineness and accuracy of observation, and a clear flow and order of language and ideas, made talking a delight and a profit.
There was nothing formal or didactic about Sophie, and her talk rippled forth as naturally and spontaneously as a brook trickles over its brown stones, or the over-hanging willows whisper in the wind. There was in it the unwearied and unweariable freshness of nature. And Sophie's vein of humor was as fine and pungent as the aroma of a lemon: it touched her words now and then, and made their flavor all the more acceptable.
So Bressant gained his end at last, though he had yielded it; and this fact was not lost upon the trained keenness of his observation. After his nurse was gone, he lay with closed eyes, and a general sensation of comfort, until he fell asleep. Quiet dreams came to him, such as children have sometimes, but grown-up people seldom. Everywhere he seemed to follow a cool, white cloud. But where was Cornelia?
CHAPTER XV.
AN UNTIMELY REMINISCENCE.
In spite of nursing and a very strong constitution, Bressant's recovery was slow. The fact was, his mind was restless and disturbed, and produced a fever in his blood. Large and powerful as he was, his physical was largely dependent on his mental well-being, as must always be the case with persons well organized throughout. He would never have been so muscular and healthy had his life not been an undisturbed and self-complacent one. These questions of the heart and emotions were not salutary to his body, however beneficial otherwise.
At the same time, no one is quite himself who is ill, and doubtless Bressant would have escaped many of his difficulties, and solved others with comparatively little trouble, if his faculties had not been untuned by illness. While he was more open to the influx of all these novel ideas and problems, he was less able to deal with and dispose of them. So the professor, while encouraged by the observation of his apparent progress in the direction of human feeling and emotional warmth, was concerned to find him falling off in recuperative power.
Sophie was largely to blame for it. Bressant was getting to depend too much upon her society. He brightened when she came in, and was gloomy when she went out. He liked to talk and argue with her; to dash waves of logic, impetuous but subtle, against the rock of her pure intuitions and steady consistency. He was careful not to go too far; though, indeed, she usually had the best of the encounter. Of course his knowledge and trained faculties far surpassed Sophie's simple acquirements and modest learning; but she had a marvelous penetration in seeing a fallacy, even when she knew not how to expose it; and she mercilessly pricked many of the conceited bubbles of his understanding.
Doubtless she would have noticed the too prominent position which she had come to occupy in the invalid's horizon, had not her eyes, so clear to see every thing else, been blinded by the fact that he, also, was grown to be of altogether too much importance to her. She never for a moment imagined that any thing but an abstract and ideal scheme for benefiting Bressant was actuating her in her intercourse with him. She proposed to educate him in pure beliefs and true aspirations; to show him that there was more in life than can be mathematically proved. But that she could derive other than an immaterial and impersonal enjoyment from it--oh, no!
This was quixotic and unpractical, if nothing worse. What other means of imparting spiritual knowledge could a young girl like Sophie have, than to exhibit to her pupil the structure and workings of her own soul? But this could not be done with impunity; neither was Bressant a cup, to be emptied and then refilled with a purer substance. Young men and women with exalted and ideal views about each other, cannot do better than to keep out of one another's way. Unless they are prepared to mingle a great deal of what is earthly with their dreams, they will be apt, sooner or later, to have a rude awakening.
The conceit of her ideal crusade against Bressant's shortcomings blinded Sophie to what she could not otherwise have helped seeing--that she enjoyed his companionship for its own immediate sake. She had, perhaps, more direct and simple strength of character than he; but he made up in other ways for the lack of it. Besides, he had not taken measures to obstruct the natural keenness of his vision, and therefore saw, with comparative clearness, how the land lay; an immense advantage over Sophie, of course. But when he came to analyzing and classifying what he saw, he found his intelligence at fault. That little episode with Cornelia was the only bit of experience he had to fall back upon; and that was more of a puzzle than an assistance to him.
Matters went on thus for about six weeks, at which time Bressant was still confined to his room, although decidedly convalescent. It had seemed to him for some time past that a crisis would soon be
