's mind. He could not but remember, that, but
for God's special grace thwarting the nearly-accomplished purpose of his
sin, the eyes which were filled with such indescribable visions of
glory, would have been closed in death, and the brow on which the
sea-wind was beating in such cool and refreshful perfume would have been
crumbling under the clammy sod. Surely it must be for some great thing
that his life had been saved: it was his own no longer; it must be
devoted to mighty purposes of love and toil. Kennedy began to long for
some work of danger and suffering as his portion upon earth: he longed
ambitiously for the wanderings of the apostle and the crown of the
martyr. The good deeds of a conventional piety, the quiet routine of a
commonplace benevolence seemed no meet or adequate employment for his
highly-wrought mind. No, he would sail to another world; there he would
join a new colony in clearing away the primeval depths of some virgin
forest, and tilling the glebes of a rich and untried soil; and, living
among them, he would make that place a centre for wide evangelisation--
the home of religious enthusiasms and equal laws; or he would go as a
missionary to the savage and the cannibal, and, sailing from reef to
reef, where the coral-islands of the Pacific mirror in the deep waters
of their calm lagoon the reed-huts of the savage, and the feathery
coronal of tropic trees, he would devote his life to reclaiming from
ignorance and barbarism the waste places of a degraded humanity.

Such were the visions and purposes that floated through his mind--partly
the fantastic fancies of dreamy hours, partly the unconscious desire to
fly from a land which reminded him too painfully of vanished hopes, and
from a scene which had been the witness of his error and disgrace.
Perhaps, most of all, he was influenced by the desire to escape from a
house which constantly recalled the image of a lost love--a lost love
that he never hoped to regain; for Kennedy thought--though but little
had been said about it--that Violet had deliberately and finally
rejected him in scorn for the courses he had followed.

But he wished, before he quite made up his mind as to his future career,
to see Violet once more, and bid her a last farewell. Not daring to
write and announce his intention lest she should refuse to meet him
again, and unwilling to trust his secret to any of her family, he
determined to see her by surprise, and enjoy for one las