his face with his hands.

He still did not know that his wife drank, but he could no longer trust
her, and his dream of happiness was over. He had been saved from the
Church--so as by fire, but still saved--but what could now save him from
his marriage? He had made the same mistake that he had made in wedding
himself to the Church, but with a hundred times worse results. He had
learnt nothing by experience: he was an Esau--one of those wretches whose
hearts the Lord had hardened, who, having ears, heard not, having eyes
saw not, and who should find no place for repentance though they sought
it even with tears.

Yet had he not on the whole tried to find out what the ways of God were,
and to follow them in singleness of heart? To a certain extent, yes; but
he had not been thorough; he had not given up all for God. He knew that
very well he had done little as compared with what he might and ought to
have done, but still if he was being punished for this, God was a hard
taskmaster, and one, too, who was continually pouncing out upon his
unhappy creatures from ambuscades. In marrying Ellen he had meant to
avoid a life of sin, and to take the course he believed to be moral and
right. With his antecedents and surroundings it was the most natural
thing in the world for him to have done, yet in what a frightful position
had not his morality landed him. Could any amount of immorality have
placed him in a much worse one? What was morality worth if it was not
that which on the whole brought a man peace at the last, and could anyone
have reasonable certainty that marriage would do this? It seemed to him
that in his attempt to be moral he had been following a devil which had
disguised itself as an angel of light. But if so, what ground was there
on which a man might rest the sole of his foot and tread in reasonable
safety?

He was still too young to reach the answer, "On common sense"--an answer
which he would have felt to be unworthy of anyone who had an ideal
standard.

However this might be, it was plain that he had now done for himself. It
had been thus with him all his life. If there had come at any time a
gleam of sunshine and hope, it was to be obscured immediately--why,
prison was happier than this! There, at any rate, he had had no money
anxieties, and these were beginning to weigh upon him now with all their
horrors. He was happier even now than he had been at Battersby or at
Roughborough, and he would n