n his, and bent over her with
questioning eyes.

'It seems' she went on with that difficulty which a strong nature always
feels in self-revelation, 'to take the joy even out of our love--and the
child. I feel ashamed almost that mere physical pain should have laid
such hold on me--and yet I can't get away from it. It's not for myself,'
and she smiled faintly at him. 'Comparatively I had so little to bear!
But I know now for the first time what physical pain may mean--and
I never knew before! I lie thinking, Robert, about all creatures in
pain--workmen crushed by machinery, or soldiers--or poor things in
hospitals--above all of women! Oh, when I get well, how I will take care
of the women here! What women must suffer even here in out-of-the-way
cottages--no doctor, no kind nursing, all blind agony and struggle!
And women in London in dens like those Mr. Newcome got into, degraded,
forsaken, ill-treated, the thought of the child only an extra horror and
burden! And the pain all the time so merciless, so cruel--no escape! Oh,
to give all one is, or ever can be, to comforting! And yet the great
sea of it one can never touch! It is a nightmare--I am weak still, I
suppose; I don't know myself; but I can see nothing but jarred, tortured
creatures everywhere. All my own joys and comforts seem to lift me
selfishly above the common lot.'

She stopped, her large gray-blue eyes dim with tears, trying once more
for that habitual self-restraint which physical weakness had shaken.

'You _are_ weak,' he said, caressing her, 'and that destroys for a time
the normal balance of things. It is true, darling, but we are not meant
to see it always so clearly. God knows we could not bear it if we did.'

And to think,' she said, shuddering a little, 'that there are men and
women who in the face of it can still refuse Christ and the Cross, can
still say this life is all! How can they live--how dare they live?'

Then he saw that not only man's pain but man's defiance, had been
haunting her, and he guessed what persons and memories had been flitting
through her mind. But he dared not talk lest she should exhaust herself.
Presently, seeing a volume of Augustine's 'Confessions', her favorite
book, lying beside her, he took it up, turning over the pages, and
weaving passages together as they caught his eye.

'_Speak to me, for Thy compassion's sake, O Lord my God, and tell me
what art Thou to me! Say unto my soul, "I am thy salvation." Speak it