king so frankly, but I feel from hour to hour how short my time
may be; and I had no doubt when I saw you, even before I saw you, that
I should have some message to give you, some tidings of hope and
patience."

I despair, as I write, of giving any idea of the impressiveness of the
old man; now that I have written down his talk, it seems abrupt and
even strained. It was neither. The perfect naturalness and tranquillity
of it all, the fatherly smile, the little gestures of his frail hand,
interpreted and filled up the gaps, till I felt as though I had known
him all my life, and that he was to me as a dear father, who saw my
needs, and even loved me for what I was not and for what I might be.

At this point Miss ---- came in, and led me away. As Maud and I walked
back, we spoke to each other of what we had seen and heard. He had
talked to her, she said, very simply about Alec. "I don't know how it
was," she added, "but I found myself telling him everything that was in
my mind and heart, and it seemed as though he knew it all before."
"Yes, indeed," I said, "he made me desire with all my heart to be
different--and yet that is not true either, because he made me wish not
to be something outside of myself, but something inside, something that
was there all the time: I seem never to have suspected what religion
was before; it had always seemed to me a thing that one put on and
wore, like a garment; but now it seems to me to be the most natural,
simple, and beautiful thing in the world; to consist in being oneself,
in fact." "Yes, that is exactly it," said Maud, "I could not have put
it into words, but that is how I feel." "Yes," I said, "I saw, in a
flash, that life is not a series of things that happen to us, but our
very selves. It is not a question of obeying, and doing, and acting,
but a question of being. Well, it has been a wonderful experience; and
yet he told me nothing that I did not know. God in us, not God with
us." And presently I added: "If I were never to see Mr. ---- again, I
should feel he had somehow done more for me than a hundred
conversations and a thousand books. It was like the falling of the
spirit at Pentecost."

That strange sense of an uplifted freedom, of willing co-operation has
dwelt with me, with us both, for many days. I dare not say that life
has become easy; that the cloud has rolled away; that there have not
been hours of dismay and dreariness and sorrow. But it is, I am sure, a
turning-po