rant, for I have read very little."

"It does not need much to reveal what is in a person. It would be a
great help to me if we could read a book together. This
self-imprisonment day after day and self-imposed reticence is very
unwholesome. I would give much to have a pupil or a friend whose world
is my world."

To Catharine it seemed as if she was being sucked in by a whirlpool and
carried she knew not whither. They had reached the gate, and he had
taken her hand in his to bid her good-bye. She felt a distinct and
convulsive increase of pressure, and she felt also that she returned it.
Suddenly something passed through her brain swift as the flash of the
swiftest blazing meteor: she dropped his hand, and, turning instantly,
went back to the house, retreating behind the thick bank of evergreens.

"Where is Miss Furze?" said Mrs. Cardew, who came down the path a minute
or two afterwards.

"I do not know: I suppose she is indoors."

"A canting, hypocritical parson, type not uncommon, described over and
over again in novels, and thoroughly familiar to theatre-goers." Such,
no doubt, will be the summary verdict passed upon Mr. Cardew. The truth
is, however, that he did not cant, and was not a hypocrite. One or two
observations here may perhaps be pertinent. The accusation of hypocrisy,
if we mean lofty assertion, and occasional and even conspicuous moral
failure, may be brought against some of the greatest figures in history.
But because David sinned with Bathsheba, and even murdered her husband,
we need not discredit the sincerity of the Psalms. The man was
inconsistent, it is true, inconsistent exactly because there was so much
in him that was great, for which let us be thankful. Let us take notice
too, of what lies side by sidle quietly in our own souls. God help us if
all that is good in us is to be invalidated by the presence of the most
contradictory evil.

Secondly it is a fact that vitality means passion. It does not mean
avarice or any of the poor, miserable vices. If David had been a wealthy
and most pious Jerusalem shopkeeper, who subscribed largely to missionary
societies to the Philistines, but who paid the poor girls in his employ
only two shekels a week, refusing them ass-hire when they had to take
their work three parts of the way to Bethlehem, and turning them loose at
a minute's warning, he certainly would not have been selected to be part
author of the Bible, even supposing his courtsh