ill-treated, the thought of the child only an extra
horror and burden! And the pain all the time so merciless, so cruel--no
escape! Oh, to give all one is, or ever can be, to comforting! And yet
the great sea of it one can never touch! It is a nightmare--I am weak
still, I suppose; I don't know myself; but I can see nothing but jarred,
tortured creatures everywhere. All my own joys and comforts seem to lift
me selfishly above the common lot.'

She stopped, her large gray-blue eyes dim with tears, trying once more
for that habitual self-restraint which physical weakness had shaken.

'You _are_ weak,' he said, caressing her, 'and that destroys for a time
the normal balance of things. It is true, darling, but we are not meant
to see it always so clearly. God knows we could not bear it if we did.'

'And to think,' she said, shuddering a little, 'that there are men and
women who in the face of it can still refuse Christ and the Cross, can
still say this life is all! How can they live--how dare they live?'

Then he saw that not only man's pain, but man's defiance, had been
haunting her, and he guessed what persons and memories had been flitting
through her mind. But he dared not talk lest she should exhaust herself.
Presently, seeing a volume of Augustine's _Confessions_, her favourite
book, lying beside her, he took it up, turning over the pages, and
weaving passages together as they caught his eye.

'_Speak to me, for Thy compassion's sake, O Lord my God, and tell me
what art Thou to me! Say unto my soul, "I am thy salvation!" Speak it
that I may hear. Behold the ears of my heart, O Lord; open them and say
unto my soul, "I am thy salvation!" I will follow after this voice of
Thine, I will lay hold on Thee. The temple of my soul, wherein Thou
shouldest enter, is narrow, do Thou enlarge it. It falleth into
ruins--do Thou rebuild it!... Woe to that bold soul which hopeth, if it
do but let Thee go, to find something better than Thee! It turneth
hither and thither, on this side and on that, and all things are hard
and bitter unto it. For Thou only art rest!... Whithersoever the soul of
man turneth it findeth sorrow, except only in Thee. Fix there, then, thy
resting-place, my soul! Lay up in Him whatever thou hast received from
Him. Commend to the keeping of the Truth whatever the Truth hath given
thee, and thou shalt lost nothing. And thy dead things shall revive and
thy weak things shall be made whole!_'

She listened, ap