"It came to me all at once when I was about sixteen," Herminia
answered with quiet composure, like one who remarks upon some
objective fact of exernal nature. "It came to me in listening to a
sermon of my father's,--which I always look upon as one more
instance of the force of heredity. He was preaching on the text,
'The Truth shall make you Free,' and all that he said about it
seemed to me strangely alive, to be heard from a pulpit. He said
we ought to seek the Truth before all things, and never to rest
till we felt sure we had found it. We should not suffer our souls
to be beguiled into believing a falsehood merely because we
wouldn't take the trouble to find out the Truth for ourselves by
searching. We must dig for it; we must grope after it. And as he
spoke, I made up my mind, in a flash of resolution, to find out the
Truth for myself about everything, and never to be deterred from
seeking it, and embracing it, and ensuing it when found, by any
convention or preconception. Then he went on to say how the Truth
would make us Free, and I felt he was right. It would open our
eyes, and emancipate us from social and moral slaveries. So I made
up my mind, at the same time, that whenever I found the Truth I
would not scruple to follow it to its logical conclusions, but
would practise it in my life, and let it make me Free with perfect
freedom. Then, in search of Truth, I got my father to send me to
Girton; and when I had lighted on it there half by accident, and it
had made me Free indeed, I went away from Girton again, because I
saw if I stopped there I could never achieve and guard my freedom.
From that day forth I have aimed at nothing but to know the Truth,
and to act upon it freely; for, as Tennyson says,--
'To live by law
Acting the law we live by without fear,
And because right is right to follow right,
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.'"
She broke off suddenly, and looking up, let her eye rest for a
second on the dark thread of clambering pines that crest the down
just above Brockham. "This is dreadfully egotistical," she cried,
with a sharp little start. "I ought to apologize for talking so
much to you about my own feelings."
Alan gazed at her and smiled. "Why apologize," he asked, "for
managing to be interesting? You, are not egotistical at all. What
you are telling me is history,--the history of a soul, which is
always the one thing on earth worth hearing. I take it as a
compliment that you should hold me worthy to hear it. It is a
proof of confidence. Besides," he went on, after a second's pause,
"I am a man; you are a woman. Under those circumstances, what
would otherwise be egotism becomes common and mutual. When two
people sympathize with one another, all they can say about
themselves loses its personal tinge and merges into pure human and
abstract interest."