sual
country-clergyman,--thrown on her own resources from an early age, and
the rest: a common story, but an uncommon person,--very. All conscience
and sensibility, I should say,--a cruel worker,--no kind of regard for
herself, seems as fragile and supple as a young willow-shoot, but try
her and you find she has the spring in her of a steel cross-bow. I am
glad I happened to come to this place, if it were only for her sake. I
have saved that girl's life; I am as sure of it as if I had pulled her
out of the fire or water.

Of course I'm in love with her, you say,--we always love those whom
we have benefited; "saved her life,--her love was the reward of his
devotion," etc., etc., as in a regular set novel. In love, Philip? Well,
about that,--I love Helen Darley--very much: there is hardly anybody I
love so well. What a noble creature she is! One of those that just go
right on, do their own work and everybody else's, killing themselves
inch by inch without ever thinking about it,--singing and dancing
at their toil when they begin, worn and saddened after a while, but
pressing steadily on, tottering by and by, and catching at the rail by
the way-side to help them lift one foot before the other, and at last
falling, face down, arms stretched forward.

Philip, my boy, do you know I am the sort of man that locks his door
sometimes and cries his heart out of his eyes,--that can sob like a
woman and not be ashamed of it? I come of fighting-blood on one side,
you know; I think I could be savage on occasion. But I am tender,--more
and more tender as I come into my fulness of manhood. I don't like
to strike a man, (laugh, if you like,--I know I hit hard when I do
strike,)--but what I can't stand is the sight of these poor, patient,
toiling women, who never find out in this life how good they are, and
never know what it is to be told they are angels while they still wear
the pleasing incumbrances of humanity. I don't know what to make
of these cases. To think that a woman is never to be a woman again,
whatever she may come to as an unsexed angel,--and that she should die
unloved! Why does not somebody come and carry off this noble woman,
waiting here all ready to make a man happy? Philip, do you know the
pathos there is in the eyes of unsought women, oppressed with the burden
of an inner life unshared? I can see into them now as I could not in
those 'earlier days. I sometimes think their pupils dilate on purpose to
let my consciou