"Can't you? When your wife suffered, didn't that touch you? Wouldn't you undo it now if you could?"
"Aye—because I'm goin'—doctor says I'm done for."
"No—well or ill—wouldn't you undo it—wouldn't you undo the blows you gave your wife—the misery you caused her?"
"Mebbe. But I cawn't."
"No—not in my sense or yours. But in God's sense you can. Turn your heart—ask Him to give you love—love to Him, who has been pleading with you all your life—love to your wife, and your fellow men—love—and repentance—and faith."
Meynell's voice shook. He was in an anguish at what seemed to him the weakness, the ineffectiveness, of his pleading.
A silence. Then the voice rose again from the bed.
"Dost tha believe in Jesus Christ, Rector? Mr. Barron, he calls tha an infidel. But he hasn't read the books you an' I have read, I'll uphold yer!"
The dying man raised his hand to the bookshelves beside him with a proud gesture.
The Rector slowly raised himself. An expression as of some passion within, trying at once to check and to utter itself, became visible on his face in the half light.