again if I can help it; and yet everything else seems so miserable.
I feel sure that demon will always be urging me to satisfy the craving
that comes upon me, and the days will go on as they have done through all
those miserable years. I shall always be doing wrong, and hating myself
after--sinking lower and lower, and knowing that I am sinking. O can you
tell me any way of getting strength? Have you ever known any one like me
that got peace of mind and power to do right? Can you give me any
comfort--any hope?'

While Janet was speaking, she had forgotten everything but her misery and
her yearning for comfort. Her voice had risen from the low tone of timid
distress to an intense pitch of imploring anguish. She clasped her hands
tightly, and looked at Mr. Tryon with eager questioning eyes, with
parted, trembling lips, with the deep horizontal lines of overmastering
pain on her brow. In this artificial life of ours, it is not often we see
a human face with all a heart's agony in it, uncontrolled by
self-consciousness; when we do see it, it startles us as if we had
suddenly waked into the real world of which this everyday one is but a
puppet-show copy. For some moments Mr. Tryan was too deeply moved to
speak.

'Yes, dear Mrs. Dempster,' he said at last, 'there _is_ comfort, there
_is_ hope for you. Believe me there is, for I speak from my own deep and
hard experience.' He paused, as if he had not made up his mind to utter
the words that were urging themselves to his lips. Presently he
continued, 'Ten years ago, I felt as wretched as you do. I think my
wretchedness was even worse than yours, for I had a heavier sin on my
conscience. I had suffered no wrong from others as you have, and I had
injured another irreparably in body and soul. The image of the wrong I
had done pursued me everywhere, and I seemed on the brink of madness. I
hated my life, for I thought, just as you do, that I should go on falling
into temptation and doing more harm in the world; and I dreaded death,
for with that sense of guilt on my soul, I felt that whatever state I
entered on must be one of misery. But a dear friend to whom I opened my
mind showed me it was just such as I--the helpless who feel themselves
helpless--that God specially invites to come to Him, and offers all the
riches of His salvation: not forgiveness only; forgiveness would be worth
little if it left us under the powers of our evil passions; but
strength--that strength which enab