Barriers Burned Away · Chapter 30 (2/2)

“With all your cleverness, Mr. Fleet, I may prove you at fault, and become able to portray what I do not feel or believe.”

“You mean to say that you work from your old standpoint merely?” asked Dennis, feeling as if a sunny sky had suddenly darkened.

“I do not say that at all, but that I do not work from yours.”

“And yet you hope to succeed?”

“I think I am succeeding.”

Perplexity and disappointment were plainly written on his face. She, with a merry and half-malicious laugh, turned to the piano, and sung:

“From Mount Olympus’ snowy height

The gods look down on human life:

Beneath contending armies fight;

All undisturbed they watch the strife.”

Dennis looked at her earnestly, and after a moment said, “Will you please play that accompaniment again?”

She complied, and he sang:

“Your Mount Olympus’ icy peak

Is barren waste, by cold winds swept:

Another height I gladly see,

Where God o’er human sorrow wept.”

She turned a startled and almost wistful face to him, for he had given a very unexpected answer to her cold, selfish philosophy, which was so apt and sudden as to seem almost inspired.

“Do you refer to Christ’s weeping over Jerusalem?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She sat for a little time silent and thoughtful, and Dennis watched her keenly. Suddenly her brow darkened, and she said, bitterly: “Delusion! If He had been a God He would not have idly wept over sorrow. He would have banished it.”

Dennis was about to reply eagerly, when Mr. Ludolph entered, and music was resumed. But it was evident that Dennis’s lines had disturbed the fair sceptic’s equanimity.