emed to relax the fibres of the inner man, 'the fever
and the fret of human thought, the sense of littleness, of impotence, of
evanescence--and he has soothed it all!'

'Oh, not all, not all!' cried Catherine, her look kindling, and her rare
passion breaking through; 'how little in comparison!'

For her thoughts were with him of whom it was said, _'He needed not that
any one should bear witness concerning man, for he knew what was in
man_.' But Robert's only response was silence and a kind of quivering
sigh.

'Robert!' she cried, pressing her cheek against his temple, 'tell me, my
dear, dear husband, what it is troubles you. Something does--I am
certain--certain!'

'Catherine--wife--beloved!' he said to her, after another pause, in a
tone of strange tension she never forgot; 'generations of men and women
have known what it is to be led spiritually into the desert, into that
outer wilderness where even the Lord was "tempted." What am I that I
should claim to escape it? And you cannot come through it with me, my
darling--no, not even you! It is loneliness--it is solitariness
itself----' and he shuddered. 'But pray for me--pray that _He_ may be
with me, and that at the end there may be light!'

He pressed her to him convulsively, then gently released her. His solemn
eyes, fixed upon her as she stood there beside him, seemed to forbid
her to say a word more. She stooped; she laid her lips to his; it was a
meeting of soul with soul; then she went softly out, breaking the quiet
of the house by a stifled sob as she passed upstairs.

Oh! but at last she thought she understood him. She had not passed her
girlhood, side by side with a man of delicate fibre, of melancholy and
scrupulous temperament, and within hearing of all the natural interests
of a deeply religious mind, religious biography, religious psychology,
and--within certain sharply defined limits--religious speculation,
without being brought face to face with the black possibilities of
'doubts' and 'difficulties' as barriers in the Christian path. Has not
almost every Christian of illustrious excellence been tried and humbled
by them? Catherine, looking back upon her own youth, could remember
certain crises of religious melancholy, during which she had often
dropped off to sleep at night on a pillow wet with tears. They had
passed away quickly, and for ever. But she went back to them now,
straining her eyes through the darkness of her own past, recalling her
fat