you all through life? Believe me, we should
struggle; and after we have indulged ourselves
in a sorrow and repentance, perhaps, for a time
—let it be a long time even—we should then
think of life and its duties. Dear Mr. Tillotson,
I do not want to run into the common
exhortation that comes from that pulpit there
every Sunday; but I myself was inclined to do
as you are inclined to do—to drag hopelessly
through life, but——"

"It is too kind of you," he said, excitedly—
"too generous; and indeed, if I dare, or if I
could, I would carry out what you say, when I
would shut my ears to the platitudes poured
from that place. But you do not know—you
can't know all, Miss Millwood! Sorrows
and troubles! Yes! I were blessed indeed
if all known misfortunes were poured out
on me: ruin, poverty, sickness, anything.
You will think this extravagance. But I know
how to struggle, and would welcome such
trials. But there are other things that must
walk with us through life till we reach our
graves. That, nothing here can atone for. That
gives us a dismal pleasure in gloom and misery,
because we know the more we suffer the more
we are atoning."

She answered him as excitedly as he had
spoken, and the setting sunlight outside came
now in a gorgeous slant from the amber panes
right on the amber hair.

"Why," she said, "this is the hopeless
doomed Calvinist's faith—despairing, wretched,
hopeless. It makes me miserable to hear you
talk so. It fills me with despair. I don't know
your history, and I don't wish to know. But
no matter what has happened. I conjure
you and implore—I would go down on my
knees here, in this sacred place, to ask you to
fly from yourself and banish this fatal, miserable,
destroying idea!"

"And what am I to do?" he said, putting his
hand to his forehead. "If you preach, I must
listen. Call it destroying, despairing, horrible
—what you like. But you do not know—you
cannot guess——"

"I can look into your face," she said,
confidently, "and see none of the cold hard lines of
guilt. I can tell that you have been, to use the
common hackneyed form, more sinned against
than sinning. That, when young, you have
been foolish, thoughtless, and have thus done
things which others do coldly and with guilty
premeditation."

"Oh," he said, "it is indeed as you say. I
dare sometimes to flatter myself it is so. Thank
you a thousand and a thousand times over for
this kind judgment. I shall think of it, and
force myself to believe it. You say you look in
my face; but can you look at this hand? Ah!
is there no physiognomy in the hand?"

She shrank back a little. "It is not for me,"
she said, "to pass judgment, nor do I wish to
know the course of any one's past life. That is
for his conscience."

"They have not put 'Confessionals' round
this cathedral," he said, bitterly, and looking
round. "I wish to Heaven sometimes they
had. I saw you turn away, Miss Millwood.
You see I judged myself better, after all, than
you could do."

"No, indeed," she said, eagerly, and coming
back close to him again, "you mistake. You
spoke so mysteriously."

"And yet you must not," he said, "take
with you a wrong impression. Whatever was
done was forced upon me. Whatever——"

"But tell me," she said, suddenly, "have you
no relative—no sister, father, or mother?"

"Not one left," he said, in a strange steady
key of despair that went to her heart; "and yet
my father and mother might both have been
alive now. For it rested with me!"

Again she half shrank away.

"I see it," he said, bitterly. "How empty
are professions, after all. No matter; I was
young, and careless, and wicked. 'Wild' is
the gentle word of the world. I was wilder
than even those complimented as wild. I was
sent away abroad to save them at home from
disgrace, although it nearly broke their hearts.
But it had to be done. We are not in a
confessional, Miss Millwood, but I am telling you
everything. I went away recklessly, rejoicing
at being free now and for ever. My father,
ill and broken, sent for me. I in part
disbelieved the illness; in part was too proud,
and said, 'Let them come to me, since they
sent me away from them;' in part listened
to some wicked friends who were real 'men of
the world.' He died without my seeing him. I
did feel that—I did indeed, Miss Millwood,
though I cannot expect you to believe me."

"How you mistake," she answered. "I
believe you and feel for you. Indeed I do."

"Ah, but you have not heard all. There
came a passionate letter from her, laying his
death at my door, calling me her husband's
murderer, telling me to be an outcast, never to
come near her, and end my wretched course
as soon as I pleased, and let her end hers.
That roused my wretched pride again; and oh,
Miss Millwood, what will you think of me now?
Then I went on from worse to what was yet
worse, until even in the foreign places I became
notorious. One vile story after another
travelled home about me, some true, some false,
but all reaching, until came that worst and most
fatal story of all, which, oh, Miss Millwood, was
true, true, and ever will be true. And when
they told her that, she could bear no more,
and——" He could not go on.

But, in a voice of the tenderest sweetness, she
said to him, "There, you must not think or talk
of these things any more. I can understand.
I don't ask to know more. And still I repeat
what I have said before: whatever has happened,
you must try and struggle. It is a duty, and
the best atonement you can make to that lost
parent."

"Ah, that lost parent," he said, despairingly.
"But I did not tell you what led to the loss.
No, no, dear Miss Millwood. I must go on as
I have gone on. I have indeed tried travel,