“God is good,” he said more quietly. “He'll take care of the likes of me.”
His motionless eyes were on the crackling fire, and he stood in the light that flashed from it with a face like stone. “I've no child now,” he muttered, as though speaking to himself.
She slid to her knees at his feet, took the hand that hung by his side and began to cover it with kisses. “Forgive me,” she said; “I have been very weak and very guilty.”
“What's the use of talking like that?” he answered. “What's past is past,” and he drew his hand away. “No child now, no child now,” he muttered again, as though his dispair cried out to God.
He was feeling like a man wrecked in mid-ocean. A spar came floating towards him. It was all he could lay hold of from the foundering ship, in which he had sailed, and sung, and laughed, and slept. He had thought to save his life by it, but another man was clinging to it, and he had to drop it and go down.
She could not look into his face again; she could not touch his hand; she could not ask for his forgiveness. He stood over her for a moment without speaking, and then, with his hollow cheeks, and deep eyes, and ragged heard, he went away in the morning sunlight.
XII.
Phillip fell into a deep sleep. When he awoke, he saw, as in a mirror, a solution to the tumultuous drama of his life. It was a glorious solution, a liberating and redeeming end, an end bringing freedom from the bonds which had beset him. What matter if it was hard; if it was difficult; if it was bitter as Marah and steep as Calvary? He was ready, he was eager. Oh, blessed sleep! Oh, wise and soothing sleep I It had rent the dark cloud of his past and given the flash of light that illumined the path before him.
He opened his eyes and saw Auntie Nan seated by his side, reading a volume of sermons. At the change in his breathing the old dove looked round, dropped the book, and began to flutter about. “Hush, dearest, hush!” she whispered.