looking, found it no longer
abhorrent but of mysterious virtue and efficacy, endued with power to
open the gates of a way, closed to most men, into the heart of
humanity, which, in a sense, is nothing less than the heart of Almighty
God Himself. It was as though, like the saint of old, daring to kiss
the scabs and sores of the leper, he found himself gazing on the divine
lineaments of the risen Christ. And this brought to him a sense of
almost awed repose. It released him from the vicious circle of self, of
sharp-toothed disappointment and leaden-heavy discouragement, in which
he had so long fruitlessly turned. He seemed consciously to slough off
the foul and ragged garment of the past and all its base, unprofitable
memories, as the snake sloughs off her old skin in the warm May weather
and glides forth, glittering, in a coat of untarnished, silver mail.
The whole complexion of his thought regarding his personal
disfigurement was changed.

Not that he flattered himself the discomfort, the daily vexation and
impediment of it, had passed away. On the contrary these very actually
remained, and would remain to the end. And the consequences they
entailed remained also, the restrictions and deprivations they
inflicted. They put many things, dear to every sane and healthy-minded
man, hopelessly out of his reach, very much upon the shelf. Love and
marriage were shelved thus, in his opinion, let alone lesser and more
ephemeral joys. Only the ungrudging acceptance of the denial of those
joys, whether small or great, was a vital part of that idea to the
evolution of which he now dedicated himself--that Whole which, in
process of its evolution, would make for a sober and temperate
well-being, formed on the pattern, sober yet nobly spacious, cleanly,
and wholesome, of the sun-visited landscape there without. He had just
got to discipline himself into the harmony with the idea newly revealed
to him. And that, as he told himself, not without a sense of the humour
of the situation in certain aspects, meant in more than one department,
plenty of work!--And he had to spend himself and go on, through good
report and ill, through gratitude and, if needs be, through abuse and
detraction, still spending himself, actively, untiringly, in the effort
to make some one person--it hardly mattered whom, but for choice, those
who like himself had been treated unhandsomely by nature or by
accident--just a trifle happier day by day.

But, while Rich