He sprang after her, almost on his knees, and looked up into her
beautiful face with an imploring cry.

'What, do you, too, throw me off? Will you, too, treat the poor
wild uneducated sportsman as a Pariah and an outcast, because he is
not ashamed to be a man?--because he cannot stuff his soul's hunger
with cut-and-dried hearsays, but dares to think for himself?--
because he wants to believe things, and dare not be satisfied with
only believing that he ought to believe them?'

She paused, astonished.

'Ah, yes,' he went on, 'I hoped too much! What right had I to
expect that you would understand me? What right, still more, to
expect that you would stoop, any more than the rest of the world, to
speak to me, as if I could become anything better than the wild hog
I seem? Oh yes!--the chrysalis has no butterfly in it, of course!
Stamp on the ugly motionless thing! And yet--you look so beautiful
and good!--are all my dreams to perish, about the Alrunen and
prophet-maidens, how they charmed our old fighting, hunting
forefathers into purity and sweet obedience among their Saxon
forests? Has woman forgotten her mission--to look at the heart and
have mercy, while cold man looks at the act and condemns? Do you,
too, like the rest of mankind, think no-belief better than
misbelief; and smile on hypocrisy, lip-assent, practical Atheism,
sooner than on the unpardonable sin of making a mistake? Will you,
like the rest of this wise world, let a man's spirit rot asleep into
the pit, if he will only lie quiet and not disturb your smooth
respectabilities; but if he dares, in waking, to yawn in an