"That's a very wrong view and I won't grant it," answered Barlow.
"Who can look into the heart of another? Who can know the driving power behind us?"
"It's not her heart: it's her poor head. Briggs is watching over her and he don't like it any more than I do. There's a well-known condition of the human mind called 'religious melancholy,' Jacob; and it's a very dangerous thing. And it's got to be stopped, or else a worse state may over-get her."
"She looks back and mourns maybe? Perhaps it's only her frozen humanity thawing with the years."
"She don't look back. Never was a woman less prone to look back. She looks forward and, owing to this delusion of the mind, she don't like what she sees and it makes her terrible glum. Her eyes are full of thunder, and her voice is seldom heard now."
"We reap what we sow."
"Not always. She's walked hand in hand with her God ever since she came to years of understanding, and it's a hard saying that such a woman deserved to lose her hope and suffer from a disordered mind."
"It's not a disordered mind that loses hope, Barlow—only a clear one. Hope's not everything."
"Hope is everything; and if the mind weakens, then the life of the soul stops and there's nothing left but an idiot body to watch until its end. I've got to face the chance of Judy's immortal part dying, though her clay may go on walking the earth for another twenty years; so you'll understand I'm in pretty deep trouble."
"It may not happen."