owing in unhappiness for
years; is it so? you assent. You have a heavy burden at your heart, you
don't well know what. And the chance is, that you _will_ grow in
unhappiness for the next ten years to come. You will be more and more
unhappy the longer you live. Did you live till you were an old woman, you
would not know how to bear your existence."

Callista cried out as if in bodily pain, "It is true, sir, whoever told
you. But how can you have the heart to say it, to insult and mock me!"

"God forbid!" exclaimed Caecilius, "but let me go on. Listen, my child. Be
brave, and dare to look at things as they are. Every day adds to your
burden. This is a law of your present being, somewhat more certain than
the assertion which you just now so confidently made, the impossibility of
your believing in that law. You cannot refuse to accept what is not an
opinion, but a fact. I say this burden which I speak of is not simply a
dogma of our creed, it is an undeniable fact of nature. You cannot change
it by wishing; if you were to live on earth two hundred years, it would
not be reversed, it would be more and more true. At the end of two hundred
years you would be too miserable even for your worst enemy to rejoice in
it."

Caecilius spoke, as if half in soliloquy or meditation, though he was
looking towards Callista. The contrast between them was singular: he thus
abstracted; she too, utterly forgetful of self, but absorbed in him, and
showing it by her eager eyes, her hushed breath, her anxious attitude. At
last she said impatiently, "Father, you are speaking to yourself; you
despise me."

The priest looked straight at her with an open, untroubled smile, and
said, "Callista, do not doubt me, my poor child; you are in my heart. I
was praying for you shortly before you appeared. No; but, in so serious a
matter as attempting to save a soul, I like to speak to you in my Lord's
sight. I am speaking to you, indeed I am, my child; but I am also pleading
with you on His behalf, and before His throne."

His voice trembled as he spoke, but he soon recovered himself. "Suffer
me," he said. "I was saying that if you lived five hundred years on earth,
you would but have a heavier load on you as time went on. But you will not
live, you will die. Perhaps you will tell me that you will then cease to
be. I don't believe you think so. I may take for granted that you think
with me, and with the multitude of men, that you will still live, that you