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your despair, to the Friend and Comforter of man, you reject the only means of cure that I can imagine, in such a case as yours. Your wife's affection, your consciousness of a life well spent in the cause of humanity, these have failed to bring you peace. There is but one resource, one refuge."

"That refuge is only open to the believer. For me the gates are closed, and they are gates of adamant. Flesh cannot prevail against them."

"But spirit can. The light will break through the darkness by-and-by, perhaps. Go on with your good work, and try to forget this horrible hallucination."

"I have sought forgetfulness in strenuous work; I have striven to give every thought of my brain to others, to lose my own identity in the sufferings of others; but the paramount thought is there still. I may lose consciousness of myself, but I cannot lose consciousness of my inexorable enemy. Wherever I go, he goes with me. He comes between me and the wife I love. He comes between me and suffering mankind."

"My dear friend, I am deeply sorry for you; but my sorrow is worth nothing. God alone can help you," St. Just answered earnestly.

"Your sympathy is worth much. It has been a relief to talk to you. A lunatic notion, isn't it?" added Arden, laughing excitedly, with a sudden change of tone. "And, after all, perhaps only a horrible hallucination, as you call it-a question of nerves."

"I believe it is a question of mind rather than nerves a mind in peril of shipwreck for want of the Divine Helper of men. To be without God in the world! Oh, my dear Arden, you, and men like you, who so lightly renounce the privileges of the Christian life, who think it enough to say, 'I cannot believe in miracles, and I can steer my own course without any guiding star,' those men must be prepared for the worst that can happen to man. The empty house is there, swept and garnished, ready for visitants from hell, wild delusions, phantasmal horrors, the diabolical inventions of a mind that has lost its grasp on reality."

"In plain words, you take me for a madman ?”

"No, no; not that, but I take you for a man whose reason is in danger, whose conscience is more sensitive than he thinks, and who is in supreme need of the Divine Healer. Arden, believe me, on my honour, you have my heartfelt sympathy. I want to be your friend. I am your friend. I would do anything-anything that a man could do for his best-loved brother, to bring you peace of mind and happiness."

"You cannot do that; but I am grateful for your sympathy, and I ought not to feel angry if you think I am mad. Indeed, I sometimes think am myself."

"Will you hear my view of your position without being offended, and let me help you? I believe I could help you, if you would let me."

"I will hear your words as the speech of a friend, and nothing you can say shall offend me."

"I think you are at heart a Christian, and that the idea of having killed a fellow-creature in cold blood is as repugnant to you as it would be to me. I believe that since that act, however you may excuse it to yourself by the consideration that he fell in a fair fight, your mind has been weighed down by the sense of sin. I believe that the haunting presence that has made your life a burden has been the agony of remorse in a mind too fine to bear the stain of blood, the ever-present consciousness of a sin unatoned. I believe that for this suffering of yours there is only one possible cure, the reconciliation of the soul with God; and that until by some Divine interposition, by some spiritual process whose mode and manner I cannot foresee, faith has drawn your wandering steps to the foot of the Cross, and rent the veil that hides the Redeemer's face, and has shown you where to seek and where to find forgiveness of sin, and peace on earth, and hope in heaven -until then, my poor friend, remorse for an act which was at variance with your own life and character will pursue you with those mental horrors which you take for a diabolical influence.'

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They had passed from the east to the west, and had arrived at Oxford Circus.

"I thank you with all my heart for being in earnest with me!" Arden said, as they clasped hands, and parted.

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XVII.

WALTER ARDEN's confession made a turning-point in St. Just's life. His course of action changed from that hour. He had resolved to restrict his friendship with Rachel; he had foreseen peril to his soul in his growing regard for her; but after Arden's revelation, he told himself that his first duty in life was to safeguard the woman who had given him her friendship, and who might be in bitter need of a friend. He had no doubt in his own mind that Arden was a monomaniac, unsuspected by the wife who loved him, or by the society in which he lived. Such a delusion as that under which he suffered could only have been engendered in a mind on the verge of madness; and there could be no doubt that this man, who had Rachel's happiness and life in his power, was an incipient lunatic, capable at the present time of conducting the business of his life like a reasonable being, but liable at any hour to develop a dangerous form of lunacy.

The man who loved Rachel, who had withdrawn himself from a friendship that was becoming too close and too dear, now resolved to continue that friendship at any risk of his own unhappiness. He had no fear of peril for her. He had seen her single-minded devotion to her husband. He knew the purity of a nature in which affection reigned supreme, free from the passions that lead to the tragedy of life. He had no fear that she would ever hold him too dear; though she might come to lean upon him for help and counsel, and to turn to him in any time of difficulty. It was for him to watch for the coming of evil. It might be that Arden's hallucination was only a passing phase of a brain weakened by periods of fever in the past, and that the cloud might lift.

In his fervent prayers for Rachel's peace, he prayed in singleness of heart for her husband's cure. The blessings he asked for her were those which her own heart desired. He gave himself to her service, as her guardian and protector, without one selfish thought. His religious fervour had lifted him above the things that make the bliss or woe of worldlings. He could go on loving without one guilty hope. He could devote his life to the beloved, and ask no higher recompense than the knowledge that he had shielded her from dangers of which she knew not. To work for her without reward and without praise was all he asked from Fate.

He associated himself now more nearly with the little company of workers within the sound of Bow-bells, whose Bishop and leader was Father Romney. He interested himself in all Mrs. Bellingham's schemes, and in all Rachel's favourite pensioners-her old men, and women, and children, her factory girls, and working lads, her day-nurseries for infants, and night-schools for adults. There were few days on which the friends did not meet; and there were quiet evenings in every week which St. Just spent in Rachel's drawing-room, with husband and wife.

He had watched Arden during more than a year of close friendship, and had seen no sign of the thing which he feared. Whatever delusions the man suffered in the realms of thought, he was able to conduct the business of life with good sense and discretion. But from the home of the wedded lovers, from the home that had once been so happy, the spirit of gladness had fled. The gaiety of heart, the pleasure in trifles, the interest in all the details of domestic life, which make the felicity of home, were wanting in the dainty little house in Guelph Place. Rachel struggled long against the thought that her husband was no longer happy; the change had been so gradual, so vague, that she had hardly realized it. There was only the sense of something wanting, a light gone out, shadow where there had been sunshine. She took to watching her husband's face, waiting for the smile that was now so rare. She questioned him often and anxiously about his health, fearing some subtle disease, that might cloud over his life; but he laughed off her fears, and even consented to go with

her to a famous physician, in order that she might be reassured.

In a few minutes of confidential talk, after he had seen his patient, the doctor told her that she had no cause for anxiety. Her husband had a splendid constitution, unimpaired by his sufferings at Klondyke, and the subsequent breakdown. As for the depression, which had made her anxious, that was a matter of temperament.

"Some men have not the joie de vivre, and are rather difficult subjects in consequence," concluded the doctor. "Mr. Arden wants rousing-mental occupation. You should make him go into Parliament."

"I would do anything," said Rachel, with tears in her eyes; and that ended the interview, which took place while her husband was putting on his overcoat and waiting for his carriage.

"I hope you are satisfied now, Rachel," he said, as they drove away from Harley Street.

"Relieved, but not satisfied, Walter, while I see you unhappy."

"My dearest, I am not unhappy. I should be an ungrateful wretch if I could be unhappy, with the sweetest wife in the world."

She tried to persuade herself that all was well. Her husband was no less devoted than in the cloudless beginning of their union. He sought no pleasures out of his own house. His clubs knew him no more; but too many hours of his home life were spent in the solitude of his library, a large room built out at the back of the small house, covering the oblong space sacred to sparrows, that had once called itself a garden. He sat here alone day after day, seemingly absorbed in study, and no longer working with his secretary at the business of philanthropy. The secretary now came to Rachel for instructions; and it was she who wrote or dictated the answers to the daily letters. Most of the business of charity now devoived upon her; and she gradually came to lean upon St. Just for advice and help in all cases where her husband had been her ally and helper. And thus the bond of friendship grew closer and stronger, until she wondered what her life had been like before this earnest and deeply religious thinker had been her daily

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