Ethel recoiled, but came nearer, saying, very low, “It is past.”
“Yes, thank Him who is Truth. You all saved me, though you did not know it.”
“When was this?” she asked timidly.
“The worst time was before the Long Vacation. They told me I ought to read this book and that. Harvey Anderson used to come primed with arguments. I could always overthrow them, but when I came to glory in doing so, perhaps I prayed less. Anyway, they left a sting. It might be that I doubted my own sincerity, from knowing that I had got to argue, chiefly because I liked to be looked on as a champion.”
Ethel saw the truth of what her friend had said of the morbid habit of self-contemplation.
“I read, and I mystified myself. The better I talked, the more my own convictions failed me; and, by the time you came up to Oxford, I knew how you would have shrunk from him who was your pride, if you could have seen into the secrets beneath.”
Ethel took hold of his hand. “You seemed bright,” she said.
“It melted like a bad dream before—before the humming-bird, and with my father. It was weeks ere I dared to face the subject again.”
“How could you? Was it safe?”
“I could not have gone on as I was. Sometimes the sight of my father, or the mountains and lakes in Scotland, or—or—things at the Grange, would bring peace back; but there were dark hours, and I knew that there could be no comfort till I had examined and fought it out.”