The wayworn man bowed his head, and that evening in the solitude he told God. For the child was making him believe in the actual goodness (for only the Good could have made anything so good and pure) and in the possibility of goodness for himself, as he was still able to love and reverence it.
Slowly the light dawned upon his benighted soul, and only after many struggles with the darkness that was in him: this telling God was the beginning.
[CHAPTER III.]
A TALE ABOUT THE STARS.
Could we but deem the stars had hearts, and loved,
They would seem happier, holier, to us even than now;
And ah! why not?—they are so beautiful.
The strange travellers continued their wanderings. News reached them at Paris about the object of their journey, but news so indefinite that L'Estrange thought it well to proceed with caution. In any of the places through which they passed it was possible Maurice Grey might be found. He did not seem to be in Moscow, although for the time all communications were to be addressed to an agent there.
He told as much as was possible of his plans and ideas to the child, and her impatience was stayed while they wandered through the English quarter of Paris and appeared in the galleries and public places—her friend, who knew the city well, making every inquiry about the stranger's residence there.
And in the mean time L'Estrange enjoyed his peculiar position and the kind of mystery that the beautiful, fair-haired child excited among the few of his friends whom he could not avoid meeting. Mystery had always been one of his chief tools. He delighted in wrapping himself up in this misty obscurity. It challenged curiosity and excited interest. He was given to appearing and disappearing without rendering to any one an account of his motives, and the rumors current about him were many. Even his nationality was a matter of doubt to some of his nearest associates. The general idea was that he travelled here and there as a secret emissary from one of the societies which work under ground in Europe, or else that he was an agent from some one of its governments. L'Estrange enjoyed this curiosity. It suited his purposes, and he never, or very seldom, lifted the veil. To say the truth, the aims of his journey were as varied and complex as himself. This was not the first that had been undertaken with a good object, though never before, perhaps, had self been so entirely set aside.
Maurice Grey was his enemy. He had taken his treasure. He had possessed himself—for the fact was slowly dawning on his mind through the child's innocent prattle—not only of the person, but of the heart and affections, of the one woman in all the world for whom he had ever cherished a perfect sympathy. For although L'Estrange had felt many times a certain power in womanhood, although his senses had been enchained and his self-love flattered, yet it was true that this time only had his whole being been surrendered, this once only had love become one with his life—entered into him as a thing from which nothing but death could free him.