s.

'Will you tell me what that means?'

'It means,' said Robert, clasping his hands tightly behind him, his pace
slackening a little to meet that of Newcome--'it means that if you will
give me your prayers, Newcome, your companionship sometimes, your pity
always, I will thank you from the bottom of my heart. But I am in a
state just now, when I must fight my battles for myself, and in God's
sight only!'

It was the first burst of confidence which had passed his lips to any
one but Catherine.

Newcome stood still, a tremor of strong emotion running through the
emaciated face.

'You are in trouble, Elsmere; I felt it, I knew it, when I first saw
you!'

'Yes, I am in trouble,' said Robert quietly.

'Opinions?'

'Opinions, I suppose--or facts,' said Robert, his arms dropping wearily
beside him. 'Have you ever known what it is to be troubled in mind, I
wonder, Newcome?'

And he looked at his companion with a sudden pitiful curiosity.

A kind of flash passed over Mr. Newcome's face.

'_Have I ever known?_' he repeated vaguely, and then he drew his thin
hand, the hand of the ascetic and the mystic, hastily across his eyes,
and was silent--his lips moving, his gaze on the ground, his whole
aspect that of a man wrought out of himself by a sudden passion of
memory.

Robert watched him with surprise, and was just speaking, when Mr.
Newcome looked up, every drawn attenuated feature working painfully.

'Did you never ask yourself, Elsmere,' he said slowly, 'what it was
drove me from the bar and journalism to the East End? Do you think I
don't know,' and his voice rose, his eyes flamed, 'what black devil
it is that is gnawing at your heart now? Why, man, I have been through
darker gulfs of hell than you have ever sounded! Many a night I have
felt myself _mad_--_mad of doubt_--a castaway on a shoreless sea;
doubting not only God or Christ, but myself, the soul, the very
existence of good. I found only one way out of it, and you will find
only one way.'

The lithe hand caught Robert's arm impetuously--the voice with its
accent of fierce conviction was at his ear.

'Trample on yourself! Pray down the demon, fast, scourge, kill the body,
that the soul may live! What are we, miserable worms, that we should
defy the Most High, that we should set our wretched faculties against
His Omnipotence? Submit--submit--humble yourself, my brother! Fling away
the freedom which is your ruin. There is no freedom for man. Either a