If you had worn a boy's
coat, or a fishskin, always, I had sense enough to see that it was a
saint at play. Have you read all the odd stories about the saints and
the Virgin--how they appear and vanish, and wear odd clothes, and play
beneficent tricks with people? It was like that to me. I don't know how
to say it, but I think when good people play, they have to be very, very
good, or they don't really enjoy it. I don't know how to explain it, but
the moderate sort of goodness spoils everything."
Caius, when he had said this, felt that it was something he had never
thought before; and, whatever it might mean, he felt instinctively that
it meant a great deal more than he knew. He felt a little shabby at
having expressed it from her religious point of view, in which he had no
part; but his excuse was that there was in his mind at least the doubt
that she might be right, and, whether or not, his mission just then was
to gain her confidence. He brushed scruples aside for the end in view.
"I am glad you said that," she said. "I am not good, but I should like
to be. It wasn't becoming to play a mermaid, but I didn't think of that
then. I didn't know many things then that I know now. You see, my
uncle's wife drowned her little child; and afterwards, when she was ill,
I went to take care of her, and we could not let anyone know, because
the police would have interfered for fear she would drown me.
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