life, his career, his position, and, for the first time, he
enumerated among his sacrifices the possession of Groombridge. Then he
blushed for shame--also for the first time. How little _that_ had been,
compared to what he had to do now! What had he to do now? And here the
Little Master made his great mistake. He came out of the fog and shadow,
he came into the light because he thought it was safe now.

What had Mark to do that was so much harder? To submit to authority and
forgive its blunders. He hesitated for a moment; he almost thought it
was that. Then came the light, and he saw the real crux. What he had to
do was to forgive Molly Dexter. He was startled by the revelation, as
men are startled who have been in love without knowing it. He had been
nursing hatred and revenge without knowing it, for, until he had become
bitter at the treatment of the authorities, he had felt no anger against
Molly. She had simply been the patient who would scratch out the eyes of
the surgeon. He was surprised into a quiet analysis of the discovery,
and then his thoughts stood quite still. It was only necessary for a
noble soul to _see_ such a temptation for him to _fight_ it. But he
passed back from that to the whole of the wrath and hurt feeling that he
recognised too. He was angry with those in authority who expected him to
behave like a saint; he had been angry vaguely with Sir Edmund Grosse,
but more with circumstances that also demanded of him that he should
behave like a saint and do the very worst thing for himself and confirm
the calumny against him by acting as Molly's confidential friend! But he
could not be equally angry at the same time with Miss Dexter, with his
own authorities, with Edmund Grosse, and with circumstances. One injury
alone might have been different, but taken together they suggested a
plot and intention. Whose plot? Whose intention?

And the answer was thundered and yet whispered through his
consciousness. Is was God's plot, God's Will, God's demand, that he
should do the impossible and behave like a saint!

Mark had said easily enough in the first noble instinct of bearing his
blow well: "We are God's slaves." But that first light had gradually
been obscured. He had not felt then that the impossible was demanded of
him. He had come to feel it, and to feel it without remembering that
man's helplessness was God's opportunity. Had he forgotten, erased from
the tablets of his mind and heart, all he had loved