h too when the hour of great suffering comes. It
is one of my worst weaknesses to shrink from bodily pain, and I think the
time is perhaps not far off when I shall have to bear what you are
bearing. But now I have tired you. We have talked enough. Good-bye.'

Janet was surprised, and forgot her wish not to encounter Mr. Tryan: the
tone and the words were so unlike what she had expected to hear. There
was none of the self-satisfied unction of the teacher, quoting, or
exhorting, or expounding, for the benefit of the hearer, but a simple
appeal for help, a confession of weakness. Mr. Tryan had his deeply-felt
troubles, then? Mr. Tryan, too, like herself, knew what it was to tremble
at a foreseen trial--to shudder at an impending burthen, heavier than he
felt able to bear?

The most brilliant deed of virtue could not have inclined Janet's
good-will towards Mr. Tryan so much as this fellowship in suffering, and
the softening thought was in her eyes when he appeared in the doorway,
pale, weary, and depressed. The sight of Janet standing there with the
entire absence of self-consciousness which belongs to a new and vivid
impression, made him start and pause a little. Their eyes met, and they
looked at each other gravely for a few moments. Then they bowed, and Mr.
Tryan passed out.

There is a power in the direct glance of a sincere and loving human soul,
which will do more to dissipate prejudice and kindle charity than the
most elaborate arguments. The fullest exposition of Mr. Tryan's doctrine
might not have sufficed to convince Janet that he had not an odious
self-complacency in believing himself a peculiar child of God; but one
direct, pathetic look of his had dissociated him with that conception for
ever.

This happened late in the autumn, not long before Sally Martin died.
Janet mentioned her new impression to no one, for she was afraid of
arriving at a still more complete contradiction of her former ideas. We
have all of us considerable regard for our past self, and are not fond of
casting reflections on that respected individual by a total negation of
his opinions. Janet could no longer think of Mr. Tryan without sympathy.
but she still shrank from the idea of becoming his hearer and admirer.
That was a reversal of the past which was as little accordant with her
inclination as her circumstances.

And indeed this interview with Mr. Tryan was soon thrust into the
background of poor Janet's memory by the daily thicken