“And did you find them satisfying? I say not, pleasant at the moment, but satisfying?”
“Well, that is a large word,” said Aubrey.
“It is a large word,” was the reply, “yet Christ can fill it: and none can do it but He. Know you any thing or creature else that can?”
“I cannot say, for I have not needed it.”
“That is, you have not been down yet into deep places, methinks, where the floods have overflowed you. I have not visited many, in truth; yet have I been in one or two where I should have lost my footing, had not my Lord held me up.”
A very sorrowful look came into the gentle eyes. Agnes was thinking of the faithless Jonas Derwent, who had cast her off in the day of her calamity. Aubrey made no answer. He was beginning to find out that life was not, as he had always imagined it, a field of flowers, but a very sore and real battlefield, wherein to lose the victory meant to lose his very self, and to win it meant to reign for ever and ever.
And then Mr Marshall’s voice said on the other side of the door,—“This is the way,”—and another voice, dearly welcome to Aubrey, responded as Aunt Edith came into the room—
“Mine own dear boy! God be thanked that we see thee safe from harm!”
And again, for the twentieth time, Aubrey felt as he kissed her that he had not deserved it.