'In the cruel fire of sorrow
Cast thy heart, do not faint or wail;
Let thy hand be firm and steady,
Do not let thy spirit quail:
But wait till the trial is over,
And take thy heart again;
For as gold is tried by fire,
So a heart must be tried by pain!'
Adelaide Anne Procter.
Mildred slept soundly that night in spite of her bruises. It was Dr. Heriot who waked.
What nightmare of oppression was on him? What light, scorching and illuminating, was shining on him through the gloom? Was he losing his senses?—had he dreamt it? Had he really heard it? 'John, save me, John!' as of a woman in mortal anguish calling on her mate, as Margaret had once—but once—called him, when a glimpse of the dark valley had been vouchsafed her, and she had bidden him, with frenzied eye and tongue, arrest her downward course: 'I cannot die—at least, not like this—you must save me, John!' and that time he had saved her.
And now he had heard it again, at the only time when conventionality lays aside its decorous disguise, and the souls of men are bare to their fellows—at the time of awful peril on the brink of a momentarily expected death: so had she called to him, and so, with the sudden waking response of his soul, he had answered her.
He could see it all now. Never, to his dying hour, could he forget that scene—the prostrate figure crashing among the rocks, as though to an immediate and terrible death; the agonised struggle in the dark pit, the white face pressed heavily like death to his shoulder, the long unbound hair streaming across his arm; never before had he owned to himself that this woman was fair, until he had put back the blinding hair with his hand, as she clung to him in suffering helplessness.
'I wished to die, but I never knew how terrible death could be,' he had heard her whisper between her quivering lips; and the knowledge that her secret was his had bidden him turn away his eyes from her—his own suffused with tears.
'Fool! blind fool that I was!' he groaned. 'Fool! never to guess how dear she was until I saw death trying to snatch her from me; never to know the reason why her presence inspired me with such comfort and such rest! And I must needs call it friendship. Was it friendship that brought me day after day with such a sore heart to minister to her weakness?—was it only friendship and pity, and a generous wish to succour her distress?
'Oh, fool! miserable fool! for ever fated to destroy my own peace of mind!' But we need not follow the bitter self-communing of that generous spirit through that long night of doubt and pain from which he rose a sadder and a better man.