“Your Lordship speaks as if you knew!” said Clarice.
“God knows. And he who knows God may be sure of everything else.”
“Is it so much to know God?”
“It is life. ‘Without God’ and ‘Without hope’ are convertible terms.”
“My Lord,” said Clarice, wondering much to hear a layman use language which it seemed to her was only fit for priests, “how may one know God?”
“Go and ask Him. How dost thou know any one? Is it not by converse and companionship?”
There was a silent pause till the Earl spoke again.
“Clarice,” he said, “our Lord has a lesson to teach thee. It rests with thee to learn it well or ill. If thou choose to be idle and obstinate, and refuse to learn, thou mayst sit all day long on the form in disgrace, and only have the task perfect at last when thou art wearied out with thine own perverseness. But if thou take the book willingly, and apply thyself with heart and mind, the task will be soon over, and the teacher may give thee leave to go out into the sunshine.”
“My Lord,” said Clarice, “I do not know how to apply your words here. How can I learn this task quickly?”
“Dost thou know, first, what the task is?”