any meaning to them."

"Did you never feel," he said, speaking with a peculiar deliberation of
manner, "that you were exposed to danger--and to death--from which no
effort of yours could free you; and that after death, there is a great
white throne to meet, for which you are not ready?"

While he spoke slowly, his eyes were fixed upon Eleanor with a clear
piercing glance which she felt read her through and through; but she
was fascinated instead of angered, and submitted her own eyes to the
reading without wishing to turn them away. Carrying on two trains of
thought at the same time, as the mind will, her inward reflection was,
"I had no idea that you were so good-looking!"--the answer in words was
a sober, "I have felt so."

"Was the feeling a happy one?"

Eleanor's lip suddenly trembled; then she put down that involuntary
natural answer, and said evasively, looking out of the window, "I
suppose everybody has such feelings sometimes."

"Not with that helmet on"--said her companion.

With all the quietness of his speech, and it was very unimpassioned,
his accent had a clear ring to it, which came from some unsounded
spirit-depth of power; and Eleanor's heart for a moment sunk before it
in a secret convulsion of pain. She concealed this feeling, as she
thought, successfully; but that single ray of light had shewed her the
darkness; it was keen as an arrow, and the arrow rankled. And her
neighbour's next words made her feel that her heart lay bare; so
quietly they touched it.

"You feel that you want something, Miss Powle."

Eleanor's head drooped, as well as her heart. She wondered at herself;
but there was a spell of power upon her, and she could by no means lift
up either. It was not only that his words were true, but that he knew
them to be so.

"Do you know _what_ you want?" her friend went on, in tons that were
tender, along with that deliberate utterance that carried so much force
with it. "You know yourself an offender before the Lord--and you want
the sense of forgiveness in your heart. You know yourself inclined to
be an offender again--and you want the renewing grace of God to make
your heart clean, and set it free from the power of sin. Then you want
also something to make you happy; and the love of Jesus alone can do
that."

"What is the use of telling over the things one has not got?"--said
Eleanor in somewhat smothered tones. The words of her companion came
again clear as a bell--

"Because y