kept off from me by that human presence.
Harold's calm, kind voice, was saying—

"You are too excitable, my darling; I would
not have brought you here, if I had known
it; you will make yourself ill; be quiet, and
lean upon me."

But I struggled till I was free. Struggled
so fiercely out of the darkness in which he
held me, into the red, glorious, glowing light,
that he let me go and stood looking at me
wonderingly. The calmness of his half-pitying
look, irritated me yet more. I poured
out a torrent of wildly passionate words: as
soon as they were spoken I would have given
more than my life to recal them: but we
were both silent, Harold drew my arm through
his, and led me down.

I was miserable; ungrateful wretch that
I was! I shed bitter tears as we
proceeded home in the twilight. I thought
I had wounded my husband deeply by my
mad, impatient, ungracious words. Before
I slept, I had thrown myself on my knees,
sobbed out my sorrow, my wretchedness,
and entreated his pardon. I remember he
took me up and kissed me, as he might have
done a child; he did not understand, one
whit, what it was all about; he had almost
forgotten that he had received any cause of
offence: I found that to him it seemed a light
matter; that in future I need not give way
to any such agonising apprehensions of having
wounded his calm, not easily-perturbed spirit.

He was too simply, unperplexedly, good
for my comprehension. Yet I throned
myself on an imagined elevation of intellectual
superiority, and scorned his child-like singleness
of heart. But this unhappy feeling grew
up gradually; there was many a struggle
first. I wished to believe my husband a hero,
and so to worship him; but the only heroic
aspect of his character, was the very one in
which my eyes could not see him.

I was a heathen, my husband a Christian!
Do not be startled and call up visions of
Hottentots, or dark-skinned creatures of any
nation; I was only spiritually dark. I had
always lived with professing Christians;
I had heard their professions, and felt their
practice, and I was in heart truly a heathen.
My aunt Aston was the only person of Christian
practice with whom I had been acquainted;
of her I had seen little, and had always
inclined to indulge something like contempt for
her weakness of character and timidity of
nature.

While I lived with the Stones, Sunday after
Sunday saw my place in the church-pew
regularly filled by my person. My person, I
say advisedly, for in my life of slavery the
time of service on the Sunday, had always
been a time of liberty: a time for the indulgence
of day-dreamings, and wild, strange
fancyings. The Stones lived in an old
cathedral-town, and we always attended the
cathedral-service; the music there was very fine;
the organ was magnificent, and its tones gave
a mystical elevation to my musings. Mine
was the darkest corner of the pew; there
I shrank back, and dreamed with open eyes
the long sermon through.

The first Sunday we were in the Highlands,
my husband had taken pains to reach
a place where the church would be within an
easy distance, the evening before.

It was a wild country place; the houses
were scattered far and wide, and apparently
there were but few of them; yet the church
was full to overflowing, and the people in
the plain, unadorned old building, neat and
sober in attire, serene and reverent in
countenance, impressed me forcibly. Everything
was sternly simple about the service and the
preacher. Sitting beside my husband, I,
glancing up into his composed and attentive
face, liked its expression, it was grand in
its calmness. I would not have ruffled it
for the world; and as I found that once or
twice his eyes sought mine, and that he then
looked uneasy, observing my straying and
dreamy glances, I tried to listen too; but
the art could not be learned in one day, and
my thoughts would wander.

In the evening, Harold asked me, rather
doubtfully, if I would go again to church or
stay at home—he was going. I would go, I
said, and his face brightened. The evening
service was very short, and we were soon out
again. It was a lovely evening. I felt in my
husband's words—in many a little expression
and turn of thought, that this Sabbath
worshipping was, for him, no empty form; that
he came from it holier and happier. That
evening there was a kind of sweet, serious
chastened gravity in his tone and in his
tenderness that drew my heart nearer his than
I had felt it before, and yet it made me feel
half afraid of him. Very docile in spirit as
well as in act; for once, I tried to learn of my
husband.

We paced along the low, wild sea-shore,
under the stars, in the balmy night air, and
I tried to make him speak plainly to me of
his faith and hope as a Christian. A girlish
shyness on his part—or what appeared to me
such—prevented my getting at the depth
of his religious feeling. He seemed to have a
vague awe and dread o speaking of these
things. If this Religion were a real thing, it
seemed to me that it would bear to be looked
at in the face—to be spoken of in plain
words; but I could get from Harold nothing
but indefinite generalisations: of his
individual experience I could learn nothing, and
I did not want to hear from his lips any of
the trite common-places that I heard so often
before. I found that my husband could not
reason—could not even give a reason for his
faith. I ought to have looked to his life for
the teaching I wanted.

After this evening, the subject of religion
came to be an avoided one between us. I
am sure I had unwittingly pained Harold
by my tone, and I think he dreaded to find