"What do you mean?" she said.
"Did you never hear of the helmet of salvation?"
"I don't know," said Eleanor wonderingly. "I think I have heard the words. I do not think I ever attached any meaning to them."
"Did you never feel," he said, speaking with a peculiar deliberation of manner, "that you were exposed to danger—and to death—from which no effort of yours could free you; and that after death, there is a great white throne to meet, for which you are not ready?"
While he spoke slowly, his eyes were fixed upon Eleanor with a clear piercing glance which she felt read her through and through; but she was fascinated instead of angered, and submitted her own eyes to the reading without wishing to turn them away. Carrying on two trains of thought at the same time, as the mind will, her inward reflection was, "I had no idea that you were so good-looking!"—the answer in words was a sober, "I have felt so."
"Was the feeling a happy one?"
Eleanor's lip suddenly trembled; then she put down that involuntary natural answer, and said evasively, looking out of the window, "I suppose everybody has such feelings sometimes."
"Not with that helmet on"—said her companion.
With all the quietness of his speech, and it was very unimpassioned, his accent had a clear ring to it, which came from some unsounded spirit-depth of power; and Eleanor's heart for a moment sunk before it in a secret convulsion of pain. She concealed this feeling, as she thought, successfully; but that single ray of light had shewed her the darkness; it was keen as an arrow, and the arrow rankled. And her neighbour's next words made her feel that her heart lay bare; so quietly they touched it.
"You feel that you want something, Miss Powle."