ne else than
their parents, perhaps the spinster sister-in-law, whom every one
dislikes, or some entire alien. Look at Regie. He is just like me, which
must be a great trial to Minna. And they grow up bewildering their
parents at every turn by characteristics they don't understand. But she
said the spiritual children, the books, are really ours.

"If you were other than you are," said Hester, after a long pause, "you
would reprove me for worshipping my own work. I suppose love is worship.
I loved it for itself, not for anything it was to bring me. That is what
people like Dr. Brown don't understand. It was part of myself. But it
was the better part. The side of me which loves success, and which he is
always appealing to, had no hand in it. My one prayer was that I might
be worthy to write it, that it might not suffer by contact with me. I
spent myself upon it." Hester's voice sank. "I knew what I was doing. I
joyfully spent my health, my eyesight, my very life upon it. I was
impelled to do it by what you perhaps will call a blind instinct, what
I, poor simpleton and dupe, believed at the time to be nothing less than
the will of God."

"You will think so again," said the Bishop, "when you realize that the
book has left its mark and influence upon your character. It has taught
you a great deal. The mere fact of writing it has strengthened you. The
outward and visible form is dead, but its spirit lives on in you. You
will realize this presently."

"Shall I? On the contrary, the only thing I realize is that it is not
God who is mocked, but His foolish children who try to do His bidding.
It seems He is not above putting a lying spirit in the mouth of his
prophets. Do you think I still blame poor James for his bonfire, or his
jealous little wife who wanted to get rid of me? Why should I? They
acted up to their lights as your beloved Jock did when he squeezed the
life out of that rabbit in Westhope Park. In all those days when I did
not say anything, it was because I felt I had been deceived. I had done
my part. God had not done His. He should have seen to it that the book
was not destroyed. You prayed by me once when you thought I was
unconscious. I heard all right. I should have laughed if I could, but it
was too much trouble."

"These thoughts will pass away with your illness," said the Bishop. "You
are like a man who has had a blow, who staggers about giddy and dazed,
and sees the pavement rising up to strike him. The