'Let me go, Mr. Fulmort; I don't want to be ungrateful, but it is all one great mistake.'
'I am afraid you have found it so.'
His tone was sad, and made her exclaim, 'You feel it too, then? Oh, come and learn as I have learnt—see as I have seen!' Some men would have laughed at this sudden reversal of the order of things; but Mr. Fulmort felt the matter far too seriously, and the sound of inquiry he emitted encouraged her to go on. 'Oh; the hollowness of my old life—the utter lack of all aid or light when the hour of darkness came—the misery, the agony, that racked me all day and all night, when all you told me to trust to proved broken reeds. Would that I could proclaim to all what it was to see at last in Whom—in what assurance lies peace!'
'Yes, my child,' he said. 'There truly lies the only hope. May you be able to grasp it firmly, and for ever, and render the fruits of faith and repentance apparent in your life.'
'I shall never put my trust in my own works again. I hate them—I loathe them.'
'You cannot do better than repent, and bring them for forgiveness.'
'To the foot of the Cross?'
'Certainly.'
'Then you really see the hollowness and emptiness of the system of thinking them pardoned by a man's voice?'
'Did I ever tell you they were?'