Habit? Or
selection? Thought? Emotion? Vigour? If the last, what species of
vigour? What was that in the individual which gave it strength to
stay? Whence came the reproductive power which was able to carry on
the species under such terrible antagonism as the fact of death? If in
the body, where was the common element between that attenuated invalid
and my robust organization? If in the soul, between the suffering
saint and the joyous man of the world, where again was our common moral
protoplasm?

Nothing occurred to me at the time, at least, as offering any spiritual
likeness between myself and Mrs. Faith, but the fact that we were both
people of strong affections which had been highly cultivated. Might
not a woman _love_ herself into continued existence who felt for any
creature what she did for that child?

And I--God knew, if there were a God, how it was with me. If I had
never done anything, if I had never been anything, if I had never felt
anything else in all my life, that was fit to _last_, I had loved one
woman, and her only, and had thought high thoughts for her, and felt
great emotions for her, and forgotten self for her sake, and thought it
sweet to suffer for her, and been a better man for love of her. And I
had loved her,--oh, I had so loved her, that I knew in my soul ten
thousand deaths could not murder that living love.

And I had spoken to her--I had said to her--like any low and brutal
fellow, any common wife-tormentor--I had gone from her dear presence to
this mute life wherein there was neither speech nor language; where
neither earth, nor heaven, nor my love, nor my remorse, nor all my
anguish, nor my shame, could give my sealed lips the power to say,
Forgive.

Now, while I was cast thus abroad upon the night,--for it was
night,--sorely shaken and groaning in spirit, taking no care where my
homeless feet should lead me, I lifted my eyes suddenly, and looked
straight on before me, and behold! shining afar, fair and sweet and
clear, I saw and recognized the lights of my own home.

I was still at some distance from the spot, and, beside myself with
joy, I started to run unto it. With the swift motions which spirits
make, and which I was beginning now to master in a clumsy manner and
low degree, I came, compassing the space between myself and all I loved
or longed for, and so brought myself tumultuously into the street where
the house stood; there, at a stone's throw from it, I fel