re private, and
were filled with arguments; some of these taking the form of prayer.
The business was established and had old roots; is it not one thing to
set up a new gin-palace and another to accept an investment in an old
one? The profits made out of lost souls--where can the line be drawn
at which they begin in human transactions? Was it not even God's way
of saving His chosen? "Thou knowest,"--the young Bulstrode had said
then, as the older Bulstrode was saying now--"Thou knowest how loose
my soul sits from these things--how I view them all as implements for
tilling Thy garden rescued here and there from the wilderness."

Metaphors and precedents were not wanting; peculiar spiritual
experiences were not wanting which at last made the retention of his
position seem a service demanded of him: the vista of a fortune had
already opened itself, and Bulstrode's shrinking remained private. Mr.
Dunkirk had never expected that there would be any shrinking at all: he
had never conceived that trade had anything to do with the scheme of
salvation. And it was true that Bulstrode found himself carrying on
two distinct lives; his religious activity could not be incompatible
with his business as soon as he had argued himself into not feeling it
incompatible.

Mentally surrounded with that past again, Bulstrode had the same
pleas--indeed, the years had been perpetually spinning them into
intricate thickness, like masses of spider-web, padding the moral
sensibility; nay, as age made egoism more eager but less enjoying, his
soul had become more saturated with the belief that he did everything
for God's sake, being indifferent to it for his own. And yet--if he
could be back in that far-off spot with his youthful poverty--why, then
he would choose to be a missionary.

But the train of causes in which he had locked himself went on. There
was trouble in the fine villa at Highbury. Years before, the only
daughter had run away, defied her parents, and gone on the stage; and
now the only boy died, and after a short time Mr. Dunkirk died also.
The wife, a simple pious woman, left with all the wealth in and out of
the magnificent trade, of which she never knew the precise nature, had
come to believe in Bulstrode, and innocently adore him as women often
adore their priest or "man-made" minister. It was natural that after a
time marriage should have been thought of between them. But Mrs.
Dunkirk had qualms and yearnings about her