Mr. Southard closed the door, then looked at her boldly, putting her hands back. "Do not mock my empty life with so slight a gift as mere kindness," he said. "If you give me your hand, give it to me to keep."
She stood one instant wavering, then gave him her hand again. "Keep it," she said.
Lingering behind him as he went to meet Mr. and Mrs. Lewis, Margaret flung her pledged hand upward as if she flung a gauge. "Louis Granger, you shall not look down and think that I am breaking my heart for you!"
Chapter XVII.
In Exitu Israel.
Some one tells of a wind so strong that he could turn and lean his back against it, as against a post. Mr. Southard found some such effect as this in the excitement caused by his change of religion. For there are times when a strong opposition is wonderfully sustaining. It fans the flame, and keeps the soul in a lively glow, without any expenditure of our own breath.
Being thus saved the pains of maintaining his fervor, the new convert took up tranquilly his religious studies, viewing from the inside that church which heretofore he had seen only from the outside. The study was an ever fresh delight; and as, one after another, new beauties were revealed, and new harmonies unfolded themselves, the miracle seemed to be, not that he should see now, but that he should have been blind so long.
No one knows, save those who have been born away from this home of the soul, the full delight of that succession of surprises and discoveries in the search made by him who comes late to his father's house. The first dawn or flash of faith, come as faith may, shows only the door, and a dim and long-stretching perspective. But once inside, with what wonder, what curiosity, what incredulity, even, we wander about examining the treasures of this new-found inheritance of ours. Surely, we say, here we shall be disappointed. Here there will be a shade on the picture. But, looking closely, we find instead a still more eminent beauty. Nor are these varied discoveries exhausted in a few months, nor in a few years, nor in many years. Even when the noon of life has been spent in the quest, and twilight comes, still there are
"such suites to explore,
Such closets to search, such alcoves to importune."
But the most spiritual of us are not all spirit; and when, after a few weeks, the storm of denunciation against him subsided a little, weary of its own violence, Mr. Southard began to feel the vacuum left by his loss of occupation, and to depend more on the home life.
Here the prospect was not without shadows. Mr. and Mrs. Lewis had behaved nobly, and, after the first shock, had stood by him through every trial. "Not that I am so fond of Catholicism," Mr. Lewis said. "But I like to see a man who has a mind of his own, and isn't afraid to speak it."