st soul there swept a dry
destroying whirlwind of thought. Elements gathered from all
sources--from his own historical work, from the squire's book, from the
secret half-conscious recesses of the mind--entered into it, and as it
passed it seemed to scorch the heart.

He stayed bowed there a while, then he roused himself with a half-groan,
and hastily extinguishing his lamp he groped his way upstairs to his
wife's room. Catherine lay asleep. The child, lost among its white
coverings, slept too; there was a dim light over the bed, the books, the
pictures. Beside his wife's pillow was a table on which there lay open
her little Testament and the _Imitation_ her father had given her.
Elsmere sank down beside her, appalled by the contrast between this soft
religious peace and that black agony of doubt which still overshadowed
him. He knelt there, restraining his breath lest it should wake her,
wrestling piteously with himself, crying for pardon, for faith, feeling
himself utterly unworthy to touch even the dear hand that lay so near
him. But gradually the traditional forces of his life reasserted
themselves. The horror lifted. Prayer brought comfort and a passionate
healing self-abasement. 'Master, forgive--defend--purify,' cried the
aching heart. '_There is none other that fighteth for us, but only Thou,
O God!_'

He did not open the book again. Next morning he put it back into his
shelves. If there were any Christian who could affront such an
antagonist with a light heart, he felt with a shudder of memory it was
not he.

'I have neither learning nor experience enough--yet,' he said to himself
slowly as he moved away, 'of course it can be met, but _I_ must grow;
must think--first.'

And of that night's wrestle he said not a word to any living soul. He
did penance for it in the tenderest, most secret ways, but he shrank in
misery from the thought of revealing it even to Catherine.

CHAPTER XXI

Meanwhile the poor poisoned folk at Mile End lived and apparently
throve, in defiance of all the laws of the universe. Robert, as soon as
he found that radical measures were for the time hopeless, had applied
himself with redoubled energy to making the people use such palliatives
as were within their reach, and had preached boiled water and the
removal of filth till, as he declared to Catherine, his dreams were one
long sanitary nightmare. But he was not confiding enough to believe that
the people paid much heed, and he