'Will she forgive me?' said Andrew.
'She loves you more than her own soul,' answered Robert. 'She loves you as much as I do. She loves you as God loves you.'
'God can't love me,' said Andrews, feebly. 'He would never have left me if he had loved me.'
'He has never left you from the very first. You would not take his way, father, and he just let you try your own. But long before that he had begun to get me ready to go after you. He put such love to you in my heart, and gave me such teaching and such training, that I have found you at last. And now I have found you, I will hold you. You cannot escape—you will not want to escape any more, father?'
Andrew made no reply to this appeal. It sounded like imprisonment for life, I suppose. But thought was moving in him. After a long pause, during which the son's heart was hungering for a word whereon to hang a further hope, the old man spoke again, muttering as if he were only speaking his thoughts unconsciously.
'Where's the use? There's no forgiveness for me. My mother is going to heaven. I must go to hell. No. It's no good. Better leave it as it is. I daren't see her. It would kill me to see her.'
'It will kill her not to see you; and that will be one sin more on your conscience, father.'
Andrew got up and walked about the room. And Robert only then arose from his knees.
'And there's my mother,' he said.
Andrew did not reply; but Robert saw when he turned next towards the light, that the sweat was standing in beads on his forehead.