Evening deepened into the early night of the season. Candles were brought by Laura's friend, the good-natured Swiss chambermaid, and before the little girl had succeeded in tracing a history for half of the wonderful pictures in her book, she grew so sleepy that her friend was moved from his abstraction to ring the bell and give her into the care of Gretchen, after a most loving good-night and many tender recommendations to the waiting-maid to take every care of his little treasure.
He did not leave his place by the fireside till his delicate ear told him that there was nothing stirring in the house but himself.
[CHAPTER X.]
PEACE, BE STILL.
But what time through the heart and through the brain
God hath transfixed us, we, so moved before,
Attain to a calm. Ay, shouldering weights of pain,
We anchor in deep waters, safe from shore,
And hear, submissive, o'er the stormy main
God's chartered judgments walk for evermore.
Was he to pass another night of racking pain, another night of restless wandering? The little chest which held the only means by which this question, to him so awful, could be answered in the negative, lay at his feet; his very soul was yearning for rest. Outside, the white mountains were sleeping, pure as angels undefiled, beneath the moonbeams; from the next room, the door of which he had opened, came the light sound of the child's regular breathing; in the house was silence absolute.
And his rest might be as absolute as any—nay, not only so, it might be filled with sensuous pleasure, such pleasure as his brilliant youth, that had gone by for ever, had often afforded him; it might be clothed with images of beauty and delight. But, on the other hand, had he not chosen suffering—suffering instead of delight—to be a soul-purifier, to atone, if atonement might be, for some of the self-seeking of his ruined life?
And he could delay no longer; an act of expiation was to be wrought which would demand all the force of his soul to carry to a successful issue; the father of the child he loved was at hand; with all the strong energies of his soul awake he must meet him, and make him own that his enemy's words were the words of truth.