my mind away from these convictions. I have a sort of
hesitation of the soul as other men have a limp in their gait. God, I
suppose, has a need for lame men. God, I suppose, has a need for blind
men and fearful and doubting men, and does not intend life to be
altogether swallowed up in staring sight. Some things are to be reached
best by a hearing that is not distracted by any clearer senses. But so
it is with me, and this is the innermost secret I have to tell you.

I go valiantly for the most part I know, but despair is always near to
me. In the common hours of my life it is as near as a shark may be near
a sleeper in a ship; the thin effectual plank of my deliberate faith
keeps me secure, but in these rare distresses of the darkness the plank
seems to become transparent, to be on the verge of dissolution, a sense
of life as of an abyssmal flood, full of cruelty, densely futile,
blackly aimless, penetrates my defences....

I don't think I can call these stumblings from conviction unbelief; the
limping man walks for all his limping, and I go on in spite of my falls.
"Though he slay me yet will I trust in him...."

I fell into an inconsecutive review of my life under this light that
touched every endeavor with the pale tints of failure. And as that flow
of melancholy reflection went on, it was shot more and more frequently
with thoughts of Mary. It was not a discursive thinking about Mary but a
definite fixed direction of thought towards her. I had not so thought of
her for many years. I wanted her, I felt, to come to me and help me out
of this distressful pit into which my spirit had fallen. I believed she
could. I perceived our separation as an irreparable loss. She had a
harder, clearer quality than I, a more assured courage, a readier, surer
movement of the mind. Always she had "lift" for me. And then I had a
curious impression that I had heard her voice calling my name, as one
might call out in one's sleep. I dismissed it as an illusion, and then I
heard it again. So clearly that I sat up and listened--breathless....

Mixed up with all this was the intolerable uproar and talking of a
little cascade not fifty yards from the hotel. It is curious how
distressing that clamor of running water, which is so characteristic of
the Alpine night, can become. At last those sounds can take the likeness
of any voice whatever. The water, I decided, had called to me, and now
it mocked and laughed at me....

The next morning I