"He seems to me to rest his conviction more upon external proof."
"That is only because it is easier to talk about. He told me once that he was never able to estimate the force and weight of the external arguments until after he had believed for the very love of the eternal truth he saw in the story. His heart, he said, had been the guide of his intellect."
"That is just what I would fain believe. But, O Wynnie! the pity of it if that story should not be true, after all!"
"Ah, my love!" I cried, "that very word makes me surer than ever that it cannot but be true. Let us go on putting it to the hardest test; let us try it until it crumbles in our hands,—try it by the touchstone of action founded on its requirements."
"There may be no other way," said Percivale, after a thoughtful pause, "of becoming capable of recognizing the truth. It may be beyond the grasp of all but the mind that has thus yielded to it. There may be no contact for it with any but such a mind. Such a conviction, then, could neither be forestalled nor communicated. Its very existence must remain doubtful until it asserts itself. I see that."
CHAPTER XXXII.
MY SECOND TERROR.
"Please, ma'am, is Master Fido to carry Master Zohrab about by the back o' the neck?" said Jemima, in indignant appeal, one afternoon late in November, bursting into the study where I sat with my husband.
Fido was our Bedlington terrier, which, having been reared by Newcastle colliers, and taught to draw a badger,—whatever that may mean,—I am hazy about it,—had a passion for burrowing after any thing buried. Swept away by the current of the said passion, he had with his strong forepaws unearthed poor Zohrab, which, being a tortoise, had ensconced himself, as he thought, for the winter, in the earth at the foot of a lilac-tree; but now, much to his jeopardy, from the cold and the shock of the surprise more than from the teeth of his friend, was being borne about the garden in triumph, though whether exactly as Jemima described may be questionable. Her indignation at the inroad of the dog upon the personal rights of the tortoise had possibly not lessened her general indifference to accuracy.
Alarmed at the danger to the poor animal, of a kind from which his natural defences were powerless to protect him, Percivale threw down his palette and brushes, and ran to the door.