A long silence followed. Then the Bishop said:
"You have asked me to say nothing to Canon Ronder, and of course I must respect your confidence. But the first thing that I would say to you is that I think that what you feared has happened--that you have allowed this thought of him to become an obsession to you. The ways of God are mysterious and past our finding out; but all of us, in our lives, have known that time when everything was suddenly turned against us--our work, those whom we love, our health, even our belief in God Himself. My dear, dear friend, I myself have known that several times in my own life. Once, when I was a young man, I lost an appointment on which my whole heart was set, and lost it, as it seemed, through an extreme injustice. It turned out afterwards that my losing that was one of the most fortunate things for me. Once my dear wife and I seemed to lose all our love for one another, and I was assailed with most desperate temptation--and the end of that was that we loved and understood one another as we had never done before. Once--and this was the most terrible period of my life, and it continued over a long time--I lost, as it seemed, completely all my faith in God. I came out of that believing only in the beauty of Christ's life, clinging to that, and saying to myself, 'Such a friend have I--then life is not all lost to me'--and slowly, gradually, I came back into touch with Him and knew Him as I had never known Him before, and, through Him, once again God the Father. And now, even in my old age, temptation is still with me. I long to die. I am tempted often to look upon men and women as shadows that have no longer any connection with me. I am very weak and feeble and I wish to sleep.... But the love of God continues, and through Jesus Christ, the love of men. It is the only truth--love of God, love of man--the rest is fantasy and unreality. Look up, my son, bear this with patience. God is standing at your shoulder and will be with you to the end. This is training for you. To show you, perhaps, that all through life you have missed the most important thing. You are learning through this trouble your need of others, your need to love them, and that they should love you--the only lesson worth learning in life...."
The Bishop came over to Brandon and put his hand on his head. Strange peace came into Brandon's heart, not from the old man's words, but from the contact with him, the touch of his thin trembling hand. The room was filled with peace. Ronder was suddenly of little importance. The Cathedral faded. For a time he rested.
For the rest of that day, until evening, that peace stayed with him. With it still in his heart he came, late that night, into their bedroom. Mrs. Brandon was in bed, awake, staring in front of her, not moving. He sat down in the chair beside the bed, stretched out his hand, and took hers.
"Amy, dear," he said, "I want us to have a little talk."
Her little hand lay still and hot in his large cool one.
"I've been very unhappy," he went on with difficulty, "lately about you--I have seen that you yourself are not happy. I want you to be. I will do anything that is in my power to make you so!"
"You would not," she said, without looking at him, "have troubled to think of me had not your own private affairs gone wrong and--had not Falk left us!"
The sound of her hostility irritated him against his will; he beat the irritation down. He felt suddenly very tired, quite exhausted. He had an almost irresistible temptation to go down into his dressing-room, lie on his sofa there, and go instantly to sleep.
"That's not quite fair, Amy," he said. "But we won't dispute about that. I want to know why, after our being happy for twenty years, something now has come in between us or seems to have done so; I want to clear that away if I can, so that we can be as we were before."