Good night," she said positively, with a quick gesture of dismissal as
she saw the look in his eyes.

Each of the million million men who made up the past of David, that
moment reached a hand out of the distance and pushed him forward. But
of them all there was none so helpless with modesty,--so in need of
hiding from every eye,--even his own,--the sacred annals of that moment.

He was standing by the table on which burned the candles. He bent down
quickly and blew them out and went over to her by the dim firelight.

XIX

All high happiness has in it some element of love; all love contains a
desire for peace. One immediate effect of new happiness, new love, is
to make us turn toward the past with a wish to straighten out its
difficulties, heal its breaches, forgive its wrongs. We think most
hopefully of distressing things which may still be remedied, most
regretfully of others that have passed beyond our reach and will.

It was between ten and eleven o'clock of the next day--Sunday. David's
cold had become worse. He had turned over necessary work to the negro
man and stayed quietly in his room since the silent breakfast Two or
three books chosen carelessly out of the trunk lay on his table before
the fire: interest had gone out of them this day. With his face red and
swollen, he was sitting beside this table with one hand loosely
covering the forgotten books, his eyes turned to the window, but
looking upon distant inward scenes.

Sunday morning between ten and eleven o'clock! the church-going hour of
his Bible-student life. In imagination he could hear across these wide
leagues of winter land the faint, faint peals of the church bells which
were now ringing. He was back in the town again--up at the college--in
his room at the dormitory; and it was in the days before the times of
his trouble. The students were getting ready for church, with freshly
shaved faces, boots well blacked, best suits on, not always good ones.
He could hear their talk in the rooms around his, hear fragments of
hymns, the opening and shutting of doors along the hallways, and the
running of feet down the stairs. By ones and twos and larger groups
they passed down and out with their hymnals, Testaments, sometimes
blank books for notes on the sermon. Several thrust bright, cordial
faces in at the door, as they passed, to see whether he and his
roommate had started.

The scene changed. He was in the church, which was crowded from pulpit