"Then you have really some hope of her final recovery?"
"I have hope most certainly. But what is hope in me, you must not allow to become certainty in you. I am nearly sure, though, that she can never be other than an invalid; that is, if I am to judge by what I know of such cases."
"I am thankful for the hope," I answered. "You need not be afraid of my turning upon you, should the hope never pass into sight. I should do so only if I found that you had been treating me irrationally—inspiring me with hope which you knew to be false. The element of uncertainty is essential to hope, and for all true hope, even as hope, man has to be unspeakably thankful."
CHAPTER IX.
THE WALK TO CHURCH.
I was glad to be able to arrange with a young clergyman who was on a visit to Kilkhaven, that he should take my duty for me the next Sunday, for that was the only one Turner could spend with us. He and I and Wynnie walked together two miles to church. It was a lovely morning, with just a tint of autumn in the air. But even that tint, though all else was of the summer, brought a shadow, I could see, on Wynnie's face.
"You said you would show me a poem of—Vaughan, I think you said, was the name of the writer. I am too ignorant of our older literature," said Turner.
"I have only just made acquaintance with him," I answered. "But I think I can repeat the poem. You shall judge whether it is not like Wordsworth's Ode.
'Happy those early days, when I
Shined in my angel infancy;
Before I understood the place
Appointed for my second race,
Or taught my soul to fancy ought
But a white, celestial thought;
When yet I had not walked above
A mile or two from my first love,
And looking back, at that short space,
Could see a glimpse of his bright face;
When on some gilded cloud or flower
My gazing soul would dwell an hour,
And in those weaker glories spy
Some shadows of eternity;
Before I taught my tongue to wound
My conscience with a sinful sound,
But felt through all this fleshly dress
Bright shoots of everlastingness.
O how I long to travel back——'"