at it's in my power to do for you, or that I
could help you in anny shape or form, you will be showing the kindness
and mercy of God if you will let me do it for you."

He was trembling, and his voice shook, but his nervousness was gone.
"The kindness and mercy of God!" he said again. "I would feel it to be
that--oh, God! I would!" The tortured spirit in his eyes had given
place to another spirit, whose emotion Christian could neither mistake
nor respond to, yet its kinship with the immutable fidelity that was
in her heart made an appeal that she could not refuse.

"Be sure I will ask you," she said, with the pity that her own
heart-loneliness had taught her in her voice. "I can't understand what
it is that you think may happen; it seems to me as if--" She broke
off, held by the thought that disaster could hardly have another arrow
in its quiver for her. "You may be sure if I think you can help me, I
will ask you. I know I could rely on you," she said, pushing back her
own trouble, meeting his wild eyes with hers, steadfast and
compassionate.

"I'm more than thankful--grateful--you've only to speak--" he
stumbled and stammered with words that were all inadequate to his
feeling. "I won't detain you; I'm taking your time too long as it
is--and I'll have a job to get home too, the river's rising every
minute, and so is the storm--" He somehow talked himself out of the
room.

Christian returned to her work of destruction. The situation in
general had not been made easier for her by Barty's tragic offer of
assistance in some mysterious and advancing stress, or by the
certainty that she tried to shake, but could not, of what his eyes had
said to her.

But Barty, as he drove home through the storm, felt himself to be a
new man, consecrate and apart, ennobled by her promise to rely on him,
glorified by her look; and thanked God that, when the trouble came,
she would remember that he had had neither part nor lot in it.

CHAPTER XXXIX

The storm, and the preparations for the wedding, raged on with almost
equal violence, within and without the walls of No. 6, The Mall. From
the moment that daylight began on the fateful Wednesday, the day
before the wedding, and until it ceased, Mrs. Mangan's face recurred
at the window of the dining room, full of protest, primarily against
the arbiter of the weather, who had sent so supreme a hindrance to all
her preparations, secondarily, against the shops of Cluhir, whose
dilat