n made a source of unforeseen good to ourselves. Adam
could never cease to mourn over that mystery of human sorrow which had
been brought so close to him; he could never thank God for another's
misery. And if I were capable of that narrow-sighted joy in Adam's
behalf, I should still know he was not the man to feel it for himself.
He would have shaken his head at such a sentiment and said, "Evil's
evil, and sorrow's sorrow, and you can't alter it's natur by wrapping
it up in other words. Other folks were not created for my sake, that I
should think all square when things turn out well for me."

But it is not ignoble to feel that the fuller life which a sad
experience has brought us is worth our own personal share of pain.
Surely it is not possible to feel otherwise, any more than it would be
possible for a man with cataract to regret the painful process by which
his dim blurred sight of men as trees walking had been exchanged for
clear outline and effulgent day. The growth of higher feeling within
us is like the growth of faculty, bringing with it a sense of added
strength. We can no more wish to return to a narrower sympathy than
a painter or a musician can wish to return to his cruder manner, or a
philosopher to his less complete formula.

Something like this sense of enlarged being was in Adam's mind this
Sunday morning, as he rode along in vivid recollection of the past. His
feeling towards Dinah, the hope of passing his life with her, had been
the distant unseen point towards which that hard journey from Snowfield
eighteen months ago had been leading him. Tender and deep as his love
for Hetty had been--so deep that the roots of it would never be torn
away--his love for Dinah was better and more precious to him, for it
was the outgrowth of that fuller life which had come to him from his
acquaintance with deep sorrow. "It's like as if it was a new strength to
me," he said to himself, "to love her and know as she loves me. I shall
look t' her to help me to see things right. For she's better than I
am--there's less o' self in her, and pride. And it's a feeling as gives
you a sort o' liberty, as if you could walk more fearless, when you've
more trust in another than y' have in yourself. I've always been
thinking I knew better than them as belonged to me, and that's a poor
sort o' life, when you can't look to them nearest to you t' help you
with a bit better thought than what you've got inside you a'ready."

It was more