"I am not a man given to fancies, am I, Shenstone? A life as cold as the last twenty years of mine has been, does not look much like the pursuit of fancies. You have known—who better?—the bitterness that poisoned the very fountain-head of my youth; you have seen how it has tainted the current of my whole life; how that after years of suffering and self-denial, it only needs a word, a recollection of the past to bring the bitter flood back upon my heart. You know all this, and yet you deny me the only charm I see in life; the only light that gilds the dark future! Is this kind?"
He walked impatiently across the room, then came back to his place. The other did not look up nor speak.
"I know what you would say," continued his companion, after a moment; "I know you would remind me that the same blow that blighted my youth, struck deeper at your heart; that you have learned to live without what was life to you once; that I can learn the same hard lesson. I have tried, oh, my friend! I have tried to gain your heights of faith and hope; but still the unconquered flesh drags me down: the curse that generations of godless ancestors have laid upon me is unexpiated yet. You stand now where I cannot hope to stand till
"Death comes to set me free."
Death, that I shall have won! And hoped for, you know longingly, in the old days of wretchedness."
"That's past, Arthur, thank God's good grace; and life is no longer a penance to you; and that it never may be again, God in His mercy grant, and spare you what I dreaded for you. God bring you higher than I stand, but by a gentler way, if it be His will! Arthur, it was a fiercer struggle than even you can understand, in which my faith was born. It was a conflict that lasts through most men's lives, that I passed through at one dire struggle, and died unto the world forever. But, looking backward, oh, Arthur, I can look back now and see how
——"One dead joy appears
The platform of some better hope."
Better, as heaven is than earth, as peace is than temptation, as the service of God is than the weary bondage of the world!"
He lifted his head a moment, as if in involuntary triumph, then bent it again, and was silent.
At that moment the door softly opened, and the woman I had seen before stole up to where I lay, and bending down, looked in my face with anxious inquiry, while the friends at the other end of the room hushed their earnest tones, and one (my head was throbbing too much to see which) started forward, and said anxiously: