"Words only. I never mind words. Ian, you are looking ill. What is the matter with you? Is it the loss of that woman?"
"The Duchess of Rotherham? No. I never allow myself to think of her. It is a loss so transcendantly greater that there is not speech to define the distance. I have lost God!" and he looked up with a face of such desperate sorrow and patience as infected the heart of the older man with uncontrollable pity.
"O Ian! Ian!" he answered in a low, intense voice, "you cannot lose God, and, if you could, He cannot lose you."
"My father's brother![1] I have lost God, and the Devil——"
"Stop now. I disclaim for you and for myself all interest in the devil. I deny him! I deny him! Ach! I will not talk of him. If there be a devil, he can talk for himself."
"My God has left me. I know not where to find Him. I watch the day and the night through for a whisper or a sign from Him. 'As the hart panteth after the water brook, so panteth my soul for the living God.' To all my pleading He is deaf and dumb. My heart would break, but He has made it so hard that sometimes I can only pray for tears, lest I die of my soul's thirst."
"But this is dreadful, Ian, dreadful! Dear me! Dear me! What can I do?"
"What do you do when, through faults all your own, you have lost the sense of God's loving presence?"
"I will tell you truly, Ian. I write down all my sins and shortcomings, and then, kneeling humbly at His feet, I acknowledge them, and ask for pardon. I wait a moment or two, and then I mark them out with the sign of the [symbol: cross]. It cancels all, and generally I can feel this. If I do not feel it, I know something is wrong, and the confession is to make over again. It seems a childish thing for a man of sixty years old to rely on, Ian, but it has kept me at His Pierced Feet all my life long. If I had been a Roman Catholic—as the Macraes once all of them were—I should have gone to my confessor and had the priest's absolution; and I suppose it is some ancient feeling after the need and the comfort of confession. For I have 'confessed' in this way ever since I was a little lad, and I shall do so as long as I live. I have never told anyone but you of my simple, solemn rite; but it is a very solemn thing to me, however simple. Yes, it is. I speak the truth."
"Thank you. It is sacred and secret with me. Tell me now what would you do if you had to carry the burden Bunyan makes poor Christian carry through the Slough of Despond every Sabbath. It is my unspeakable burden to be compelled to preach. While I am preaching to others I am asking my soul, 'Art thou not thyself become a castaway?' Life is too hard to bear."