"I did things then, and thought them not wrong that I know now were wicked."
"Thank God for it that you know, master."
"But is it too late, John?"
"Never too late. Never too late."
"I must leave mercy to my wronged Maker. 'Tis well to be a free-thinker in a way—just as 'tis well for a country bred man to go to cities. You don't know what the country really means till you've been mewed up in the town; and you don't know what faith means till you've tried to live without it. So I feel. No freedom of thought will think right into wrong, John Prout."
"God's above all."
"Once I thought, with a wise man who lived before Christ came, that what we men call life is only a poor shadow dragging a corpse, like a prisoner drags his chain. Now I know better. Now the things that seemed good suffer an eclipse, and the things that seemed beautiful stand out in their naked, ugly truth. They were all a mirage—all shadows in a desert of sand. I thought that they quenched thirst and satisfied hunger. That was part of the great blindness, John. Now I know that the sun-dance and glare and dazzle was all a wicked sham. I wove them for myself; I blinded myself; I deluded myself. If I could tell you how base I'd been—what things I did, believing them to be reasonable and not wrong. The folly—the madness! I said to myself, 'Nature does neither right nor wrong; it is only the foolish man who calls her cruel or kind. She rises above these human ideas. And so will I.' Yes, I thought to copy Nature and follow the thing she prompted. I dinned into my own ears that what I did was far above right or wrong. I said to myself, 'Let the fools who like words call their actions "good" or "evil." Do you, for your part, look to it that your actions are "reasonable," and so content your conscience that demands only reason.' What a light has burned in on all that preposterous nonsense since! Crimes—crimes I have committed in the name of nature and reason. O God, Prout, when I think—— And now I know that it will take a forgiving Saviour to save me. Well may Christ have taught us that God is a merciful God! I should go mad if I did not grasp that unutterable truth, John. To His mercy I trust myself—and not only myself."
He prattled on of the dogmas he had now accepted, and behind every thought and pious hope John Prout saw Sarah Jane. Often the sick man spoke directly of her; more often, when declaring his new convictions he used no names; but Prout—from his inner knowledge—perceived which way his master's mind was tending. He gathered that Hilary hoped Sarah Jane would presently come to see with her husband's eyes and abandon a certain large enthusiasm for her own kind in favour of a narrower trust and confidence in the tenets of Christianity alone. Once or twice Prout believed that the other was actually going to confess his action of the past; but Hilary never did so. He told his old servant that the farm had been left to Brendon, but he gave no reason for the step. He was, however, quick enough to be astonished at John's lack of surprise.
"Did he tell you? Did you know it, that you take it so calmly?" he asked.
"To be frank, I did know it," answered John. "Don't blame her. You understand women better'n me; and you'll guess how hard 'twas for her to keep it in. 'Twas a night five year ago and more, when chance throwed us together at Lydford, and she helped me home against a storm. By the same token a rainbow showed over against the moon. Of course I never spoke of it again; more did she."