_It_ asks him
to love--to love men and women, not with lust, but with pure love; and as
he obeys, as he loves--he _knows_--he knows that it is God asking, and
that God has come to him and abides with him. So when death overtakes him
he trusts himself to God as he would to his best friend."
"Tha'rt talkin' riddles, Rector!"
"No. Ask yourself. When you fell into sin with that woman, did nothing
speak to you, nothing try to stop you?"
The bright half-mocking eyes below Meynell's wandered a little--wavered
in expression.
"It was the hot blood in me--aye, an' in her too. Yo cawn't help them
things."
"Can't you? When your wife suffered, didn't that touch you? Wouldn't you
undo it now if you could?"
"Aye--because I'm goin'--doctor says I'm done for."
"No--well or ill--wouldn't you undo it--wouldn't you undo the blows you
gave your wife--the misery you caused her?"
"Mebbe. But I cawn't."
"No--not in my sense or yours. But in God's sense you can. Turn your
heart--ask Him to give you love--love to Him, who has been pleading with
you all your life--love to your wife, and your fellow men--love--and
repentance--and faith."
Meynell's voice shook. He was in an anguish at what seemed to him the
weakness, the ineffectiveness, of his pleading.
A silence. Then the voice rose again from the bed.
"Dost tha believe in Jesus Christ, Rector? Mr.
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