I've expressed myself badly, but you see what I mean."
"And what do you think has happened?" I asked.
"I think you have changed for the better."
I smiled inwardly. It sounded rather dull. I said with a smile:
"You never liked my cap and bells, Eleanor."
"No!" she replied emphatically. "What's the use of mockery? See where it
led you."
I rose, half-laughing at her earnestness, half-ashamed of myself, and
took a couple of turns across the room.
"You're right," I cried. "It led me to perdition. You might make an
allegory out of my career and entitle it 'The Mocker's Progress.'" I
paused for a second or two, and then said suddenly, "Why did you from
the first refuse to believe what everybody else does--before I had the
chance of looking you in the eyes?"
She averted her face. "You forget that I had had the chance of searching
deep beneath the mocker."
I cannot, in reverence to her, set down what she said she found there. I
stood humbled and rebuked, as a man must do when the best in him is laid
out before his sight by a good woman.
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