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Hewland had come in, to help Aunt Blin with a blind that was swinging by a single hinge, and which she was trying, against a boisterous wind, to reset with the other. After that, he had always spoken to them when he met them. He had opened and shut the street-door for them, standing back, courteously, with his hat in his hand, to let them pass.
She laid back the leaves of the large volume, to the latter portion. She opened it in Matthew, to the nineteenth chapter. When she had read that, she knew what she was to do. She heard nothing more from Morris Hewland that night. In the morning, early, she had her room bright and ready for the day. The light was calm and clear about her. The shadows were all gone.
The devil, whom he had let have his heart for a minute, had got his lips and spoken through them before he knew. "Where?" asked Bel. "Home?" "Yes, home," said the young man, hesitating. "Where your mother lives?" Bel Bree's simplicity went nigh to being a stronger battery of defense than any bristling of alarmed knowledge. "No," said Morris Hewland. "Not there.
It was this atmosphere in which Morris Hewland lived, and which he brought about him to transfuse the heavier air of her lowly living, that bewildered Bel. And she knew that she was bewildered. She knew that it was the poetic side of her nature that was stirred, excited; not the real deep, woman's heart of her that found, suddenly, its satisfying. If women will look, they can see this.
Plain old bodies, I mean, hopping and "todillating" as Bel expressed the little spinster's gait along together; their souls walked in a sweet and gracious reality before the sight of God. Bel and Mr. Hewland were beside each other. They had never walked together before, of course; but they hardly thought of the unusualness.
Hewland liked June for his travels; and July and August, when everybody was out of the way, for his quiet summer work. The Hewlands called him odd, and let him go; he stayed at home sometimes, and he happened in and out, they knew where to find him, and there was "no harm in Morris but his artistic peculiarities."
Hewland came in, and up the stairs, and found them there. Aunt Blin had not awaked. There was a trace of morphine in her cough-drops, and Bel knew now, since she had slept so long, that she would doubtless sleep late into the morning. That was well. It would be time enough to tell her by and by. There would be all day, all winter, to tell it in. Mr.
Bel was not sure enough, strong enough, to denounce the evil that was using the love; to say to that which was tempting him, and her by him, as Peter's passionate remonstrance tempted the Christ, "Thou art Satan. Get thee behind me." Yet she shrunk, bewildered. "I don't know; I can't understand. Let me go now Mr. Hewland."
Morris Hewland young, honest-hearted, but full of a young man's fire and impulse, of an artist's susceptibility to outward beauty, of the ready delight of educated taste in fresh, natural, responsive cleverness was treading dangerous ground. He, too, knew that he was bewildered; and that if he opened his eyes he should see no way out of it. Therefore he shut his eyes and drifted on.
She had an old green veil tied down over her head to keep the dust off; nobody could suspect any harm of a wish or a willingness to have a word with her; Morris Hewland could not have suspected it of himself, if he had indeed got so far as to investigate his passing impulses.
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