ondon. You have
too much leisure here: Satan has too much opportunity. I foresaw it--I
foresaw it when you and I first met. I felt I had a message for you, and
here I deliver it. In the Lord's name, I bid you fly; I bid you yield in
time. Better to be the Lord's captive than _the Lord's betrayer_!'

The wasted form was drawn up to its full height, the arm was
outstretched, the long cloak fell back from it in long folds--voice and
eye were majesty itself. Robert had a tremor of responsive passion. How
easy it sounded, how tempting, to cut the knot, to mutilate and starve
the rebellious intellect which would assert itself against the soul's
purest instincts! Newcome had done it--why not he?

And then, suddenly, as he stood gazing at his companion, the spring sun,
and murmur all about them, another face, another life, another message,
flashed on his inmost sense--the face and life of Henry Grey. Words torn
from their context but full for him of intensest meaning, passed rapidly
through his mind: '_God is not wisely trusted when declared
unintelligible._' '_Such honour rooted in dishonour stands; such faith
unfaithful makes us falsely true._' '_God is for ever reason: and His
communication, His revelation, is reason._'

He turned away with a slight sad shake of the head. The spell was
broken. Mr. Newcome's arm dropped, and he moved sombrely on beside
Robert--the hand, which held a little book of Hours against his cloak,
trembling slightly.

At the rectory gate he stopped.

'Good-bye--I must go home.'

'You won't come in?--No, no, Newcome; believe me, I am no rash careless
egotist, risking wantonly the most precious things in life! But the call
is on me, and I must follow it. All life is God's, and all thought--not
only a fraction of it. He cannot let me wander very far!'

But the cold fingers he held so warmly dropped from his, and Newcome
turned away.

A week afterwards, or thereabouts, Robert had in some sense followed
Newcome's counsel. Admonished perhaps by sheer physical weakness, as
much as by anything else, he had for the moment laid down his arms; he
had yielded to an invading feebleness of the will, which refused, as it
were, to carry on the struggle any longer, at such a life-destroying
pitch of intensity. The intellectual oppression of itself brought about
wild reaction and recoil, and a passionate appeal to that inward witness
of the soul which holds its own long after the reason has practically
ceased