She's a good woman." He looked as if he
tried hard to believe it.
Sanchia, her hand still held, had grown serious. "Papa," she said, "I want
you to understand me altogether. I should do it again, I believe, if I
really loved somebody."
He looked at her anxiously, then away from her, while he patted her caught
hand. "Yes, my dear, yes. I understand that you feel like that. It's
queer--to me, you know. I don't pretend to see it as you do. But I trust
you. I know you're a good girl. Only--it's not the old-fashioned way; and
your mother--"
"Mamma,"' she said, "is different. She thinks I'm wicked; you think I'm
good. I don't know what I am--I don't understand myself at all; but I'm
quite sure that I should do it again, if it had to be done." Her eyes grew
large with the certainty of her argument. She had a divine seriousness, a
rapt look, as of one inspired from within. "I don't see how you can help
it, if you see quite clearly that the person needs you. It seems
disloyalty. It seems making too much of yourself--as if what happened to
that part of you mattered! And it seems making too little of yourself,
too--as if you shrank, as if you were afraid of vile people. One can't
afford to be afraid--for the sake of such a small thing.
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