'Weakness,' 'emptiness,' 'defeat,' she said, recalling his words. 'Is that what I am to find?'
'You do not think it possible,' said Dr. Maryland.
'How should she, papa?' said Primrose.
'Well, my dear, it is not possible she should. And yet, Hazel, these are the only way to find strength, fulness, and victory. It is a problem to you, my dear; only to be worked out.'
'Does every one work it out, papa?'
'No, my dear; two thirds of men never do. And so they go on forever saying, "Who will shew us any good?" '
'He did not find defeat,' said Hazel, looking at the martyr's face, and somehow forgetting the arrows and the cords.
'The story is,' said Dr. Maryland, 'that he was an officer, high in trust and command, in the service of the Emperor (Diocletian.). For owning himself a Christian, he was stripped of power and place, delivered into the will of his enemies, to be bound to a tree and shot to death with arrows. There is the human defeat, my dear Hazel. What you see in the face there, is the mental victory;—some of the struggle, too.'
' "Mental victory" '—she said half to herself, considering the words. 'I ought to be equal to that. Did you mean "defeat," Dr. Arthur, by "the loss of all things?" '
'No,' said Dr. Arthur, 'I meant anything but that. I meant nothing worse than the exchange of a handful of soiled paper for both the hands full of solid gold.'