ly knew
how, though it was supposed on supplies sent him by a shopkeeper uncle
in the country, and constantly on the verge, as all his acquaintances
felt, of some ingenious expedient or other for putting an end to himself
and his troubles. He was unmarried, and a misogynist to boot. No woman
willingly went near him, and he tended himself. How Robert had gained
any hold upon him no one could guess. But from the moment when Elsmere,
struck in the lecture-room by the pallid ugly face and swathed neck,
began regularly to go and see him, the elder man felt instinctively that
virtue had gone out of him and, that in some subtle way yet another life
had become pitifully, silently dependent on his own stock of strength
and comfort.

His lecturing and teaching also was becoming more and more the
instrument of far-reaching change, and thereafter, more and more,
difficult to leave. The thoughts of God, the image of Jesus which were
active and fruitful in his own mind, had been gradually passing from the
one into the many, and Robert watched the sacred transforming emotion
nurtured at his own heart, now working among the crowd of men and women
his fiery speech had gathered round him, with a trembling joy, a
humble prostration of soul before the Eternal Truth, no words can fitly
describe. With and ever increasing detachment of mind from the objects
of self and sense, he felt himself a tool, in the Great Workman's hand,
'Accomplish Thy purposes in me,' was the cry of his whole heart and
life; 'use me to the utmost; spend every faculty I have, O "Thou who
mouldest men!"'

But in the end his work itself drove him away. A certain memorable
Saturday evening brought it about. It had been his custom of late, to
spend an occasional evening hour after the night-school work in the
North R---- Club, of which he was now by invitation a member. Here, in
one of the inner rooms, he would stand against the mantelpiece chatting,
smoking often with the men. Everything came up in turn to be discussed;
And Robert was at least as ready to learn from the practical workers
about him as to teach. But in general these informal talks and debates
became the supplement of the Sunday lectures. Here he met Andrews and
the Secularist crew face to face; here he grappled in Socratic fashion
with objections and difficulties throwing into the task all his charm
and all his knowledge, a man at once of no pretensions and of unfailing
natural dignity. Nothing, so far,