nt sense of
unrest, just as there is about a new person, that racks the nerves.

"I have been very anxious and 'heavy' to-day, as the Psalms have it:
dispirited about the future and the present, and remorseful about the
past. You don't mind my speaking freely, do you? I feel so weak and
womanish, I must tell some one. I have no one to lean on here.

"I can't see what to make of my life, or, rather, what can possibly
be made of it. I have taken hitherto all the rebuffs I have had--and
they have not been few--as painful steps in an education which was to
fit me for something. I was having, I hoped, experience which was to
enable me to sympathize with human beings fully, when I came to speak
to them, to teach them, to lead them, as I have all my life believed
I some day should.

"You won't think it conceited if I say this to you, my dear Chris?
I don't feel to myself as if I was like other people. I have met
several people better and on a higher level than myself, but no one
on quite the same level--no one, to put it shortly, quite so _sure_
as I am.

"Does that explain itself? I mean that I have for many years been
conscious of a kind of inward law that I dare not disobey, and which
has constrained me into obedience--once unwilling, now willing, and
even enthusiastic. In others, it has always seemed to me that there
is strife and [Greek: dipsyxia]--one great factor pulling one way
and one another; but it has never been so with me--there has never
been a serious strain. I have always known what I meant, and have
generally done it; and little by little, as I have lived, comparing
this inner presence with what I can see of moral laws, of Divine
government, I have come to observe that the two are almost identical,
though there are certain variations which I have not yet accounted
for.

"Mind, this has been in my case a _negative_ influence; it has never
urged a course upon me; it has always withheld me. Even in a dilemma
of any kind, it never has said, 'Do this;' it is always, 'Avoid
that.' So that I have had to take my line, as I have done in
practical things, though never in opposition to its warnings.

"I had always thought that I was being educated to the point of
describing this subjective law to others, and helping them to some
such position. I have always felt that I had a message to deliver,
though the manner and method of delivering it I felt I had to
discover.

"And so I was led from point to point. I was