"Oh, Walter, my darling, what has happened to you? Tell me what you mean."
"I am not mad, mother, if that is what you think."
"I don't think so, Walter. I don't know what to think. Tell me. Oh, my boy, have pity upon me; tell me."
"You will do me more good, mother, if you will tell me—how I am to get this burden off, and be a free man."
"The burden of—what? Sin? Oh, my son!" she cried, rising to her feet, with tears of joy streaming from her eyes. She put her hands upon his head and bade God bless him. God bless him! "There is no doubt about that; no difficulty about that," she said; "for everything else in the world there may be uncertainty, but for this none. God is more ready to forgive than we are to ask. If you wish it sincerely with all your heart, it is done. He is never far from any of us. He is here, Walter—here, ready to pardon!"
He took her hands which she had put upon him, and looked at her, shaking his head.
"Mother, you are going too fast," he said. "I want deliverance, it is true; but I don't know if it is that I mean."
"That is at the bottom of all, Walter."
He put her softly into her chair, and calmed her agitation; then he began to walk up and down the room.
"That is religion," he said. "I suppose it is at the bottom of all. What was it you used to teach me, mother, about a new heart? Can a man enter a second time—and be born? That seems all so visionary when one is living one's life. You think of hundreds of expedients first. To thrust it away from you, and forget all about it; but that does not answer; to defy it and go the other way out of misery and spite. Then to try compromises; marriage, for instance, with a wife perhaps, one thinks——"