“How have you been troubled? Tell me that first, Anna.”
Anna’s colour came and went. It was not easy to speak, but honesty and frankness were the law of speech with her. Very seriously she said:—
“It seemed so strange to me that you grew, after the first few years, into what often appeared a kind of official and perfunctory way of working—letting the details cover the great purposes. It seemed little, and different from what I had expected. Tables and figures and endless reports—it was all business, and almost like other business.”
Keith Burgess nodded gravely. “Go on,” he said, as before.
“And then, you see, all at once you dropped it. Of course you had that illness, and I could see how tiresome and troubling the work had come to be; but I used to think—forgive me, Keith; I hated myself that I did—that you dropped the whole missionary endeavour and purpose and point of view as easily as you might have dropped a coat that you had worn out—”
“In short, that it was all officialism.”
“Yes, even that—that it had come to be. And you know how different it was at first, when it was your only life.”
“Yes, Anna,” and the delicate, sensitive face of the man showed something of the profound pain which he could not speak; “it has been a hard experience. I have kept it to myself because I did not think it was fair to lay upon you the same burden of doubt and conflict. I see how naturally you came to look upon the change in me as you have described. Perhaps your view is in a measure just, too, but I think not altogether.”
“Tell me, Keith.” Anna was waiting for him to go on with sympathetic eagerness.
“It was simply that, some way, I hardly know how,—perhaps it was in part worldliness and selfishness, but I think not altogether,—my views gradually have changed. Perhaps it was in the air, perhaps I took it in unconsciously from what I read, and from my deeper thought of God and his grace. What I learned of the various forms of heathen religions influenced me somewhat, and also observation of the workings of our own system in our own country even under most favouring conditions. I cannot tell, only I came definitely at last to the point where I could no longer go before the churches and plead with them to send their money to foreign missions to save the heathen from immediate eternal perdition and torment, because they did not believe in the plan of salvation by a Saviour of whom, as you say, they had never heard.”