o speak without
bitterness. "And, for a moment, you thought----?" he could not finish
the sentence.

"Good God! not for a fraction of a second. How can you?"

"Oh! forgive me, forgive me; I didn't mean it."

Mark knelt down by the chair, tears were flowing from the blind eyes.
Canon Nicholls belonged to a generation whose emotions were kept under
stern control; the tears would have come more naturally from Mark. There
was a strange contrast between the academic figure of the old man in its
reserved and negative bearing, seriously annoyed with himself for
betraying the suffering he was enduring, and yet unable to check the
flow of tears, and the eager, unreserved, sympathetic attitude of the
younger man. After a few moments of silence Mark rose and began to
speak in low, quick accents----

"It is a secret which is doing infinite harm to a soul made for good
things, and yet it is a secret which I can tell no one, not even you--at
least, so I am convinced. But it is a secret by which people are
suffering. The result is that I cannot deal with this calumny as I
should deal with it if I were free; and I believe that I have not got to
the worst of it yet. I see what it must lead to."

He looked down wistfully for a moment, and then went on:

"Last year I had a dream that was full of joy and peace, and that seemed
to me God's Will; but, through you, I came to see that I must give it
up, and I threw myself into the life here with all my heart. And now,
just when I had begun to feel that I was really doing a little good, now
that I have got friends among the poor whom I love to see and help, I
shall be sent away more or less under a cloud. I shall lose friends whom
I love, and whom it had seemed to me that I was called to help even at
the risk of my own soul. However, there it is. If I am not to be a
Carthusian, if I am not to work for sinners in London, I suppose some
other sphere of action will be found for me. I must leave it to Him Who
knows best."

Canon Nicholls bent forward, and held out his long, white hands with an
eager gesture, as though he were wrestling with his infirmity in his
great longing to gain an outlook which would enable him to read a little
further into the souls of men.

"I cannot explain more definitely. It is a case of fighting for a soul,
or rather fighting with a soul against the devil in a terrible crisis.
I don't know what to compare it to. Perhaps it is like performing a
surgical operatio