“Oh, I know what you will say,” Ethel wailed, softly. “I believed such things once, as you know. But I haven't been frank with you, Paul. Seeing your beautiful faith which brought you back here in such a wonderful way, I could not bear to let you know the truth; but I have been in doubt for a long time, and now I have nothing to hold to—absolutely nothing. You might argue a thousand years and you could not—kind and gentle though you are—convince me that a just and merciful God would allow my poor cousin to suffer as she suffered, and cause me to feel as I feel only through my love for her. If there is a good God, He is powerless to avert such as that, and a creator who is not omnipotent is no God at all. We are a lot of helpless material creatures staggering through darkness, dragging bleeding hearts after us, and yearning for what can never be ours. That's the awful, repulsive truth, Paul. It's unpleasant, but it's the truth.”
“I will tell you what I passed through after I left here, if you will let me,” Paul began, a look of pained sensitiveness clutching his mobile features. “It is hard to have you—of all persons—know to what depths of degradation I sank; but I feel—something seems to tell me—that my story may help you. Will you hear me?”
“Perhaps you ought not to tell me anything that is unpleasant,” Ethel said, listlessly.
Paul lowered his head and looked at the ground. “I am not sure, Ethel, that it is not my duty to go from man to man, house to house, and tell it word for word, thought for thought, deed for deed. The world, as never before in its history, is groping for spiritual light, and my life—my soul-experiences—would shed it upon any thinking person. No one could pass through what I have passed through and doubt the existence of God and His inexpressible goodness. It is painful to tell you, for, above all, I want your good opinion, and yet I must. Will you listen, Ethel?”
“Yes, yes,” she answered; “but, Paul, if I am absent-minded don't blame me. I've not thought of a single thing since Jennie died but the way she looked then, and in her coffin afterward. I don't think I can ever get those things out of my mind. They are simply driving me insane.”
“Nothing but an absolutely different point of view will help you,” Paul said, gravely, his glance now resting tenderly on her grief-stricken face. “When my father died I, too, was desperate. When I ran away from here that terrible night I was as near akin to a wild beast as ever mortal man was. I was at heart a murderer gloating like a bloodthirsty savage over another's death. I won't go into detail over the earliest part of what I went through. I traveled with a band of thieving gipsies for a while. Later I joined a circus, and there gravitated to the same sort of associates. Some of the company were not immoral; but I was a murderer hiding my guilt, and among only the lowest of the low did I feel at home. All others I hated.”
“Oh, do you think you ought to—ought to—” Ethel faltered. “How can it do any good to—” Her voice failed her, and she stared at him dumbly.
“I think I ought to tell you, because it is the hardest thing in the world for me to do,” he said, his tone low and labored. “I want you to know me as I was at my worst. I can't feel that I have the right to sit by you and be treated as a friend while you are unaware of what I have been. For the first two years I was as low as the lowest. I hated life, man, everything, and yet there was always something holding me back from absolute crime. Down deep within me there was always a voice, always a picture, always a sunlit scene—”
He choked up, pretended to cough, and looked away to avoid her inquiring eyes.
“I don't quite understand,” she prompted him, with her first show of interest.