l, lifting his eyebrows incredulously.

"Yes," David answered, "honest. This hope that has come to me has
wrought a great change in my heart. It has revived old feelings which I
thought long dead. If there is a God in heaven who has decided to give
me one more chance to set myself right, I am going to take it! And
listen; if this great hope can come to me, why not to you?"

Mantel leaned his head on his hand a moment, and then answered with a
sigh, "Perhaps--but," and paused.

There are moments when these two indefinite words contain the whole of
our philosophy of existence. "I am going to seek the great Perhaps!"
said Rabelais, as he breathed his last.

David looked at him sympathetically and said, "Well, it is not strange
that you cannot feel as I do. It is not by what befalls others, but by
what befalls ourselves, that we learn to hope and trust."

The silence that came between them was broken by Mantel, who looked up
at him with a trace of the old ironical smile on his face.

"Your plans are all right as far as they go, but it seems to me the
hardest part of the tangle still remains to be unraveled."

"What do you mean?" asked David.

"What are you going to do about this beautiful Pepeeta?"

"Oh, I have settled that, too! You do not know how clearly I see it all.
It is as if a fog had lifted from the ocean, and the sailor had found
himself inside the harbor. I shall write and tell her all."

"Do you mean that you will tell her that her husband is alive?"

"I do."

"And perhaps you will advise her to return to him!"

"You are right, I shall."

Mantel shook his head.

"You do not think it best?" said David.

"I do not know."

"But there is nothing else to do."

"It is natural that I should see only the difficulties."

"What difficulties can there be?"

"Will you do anything more than destroy her by binding her once more to
the man she loathes?"

"You do not know Pepeeta."

"It is true, I only know human nature."

"But she is more than human!"

"And are you?"

"Not I!"

"Then how will you endure to see her once more the wife of your enemy
and rival?"

"Mantel," said David, pausing in his restless walk across the room, "I
do not wonder that you ask this. It was the first question that I asked
myself. It struck my heart like the blow of a hammer. But I have settled
it. I have weighed the pains which I have suffered in a just and even
balance. I know I cannot escape suffering, whichever