ich may therefore just as really be behind the veil in other
cases without its presence being suspected.'

'Certainly.'

'In what sense, now, is that a possession? Do you possess the sun
because you see it? Did Herschel create Uranus by discovering it;
or even increase, by an atom, its attraction on one particle of his
own body?"

'Whither is all this tending?'

'Hither. Tregarva does not possess his Father and his Lord; he is
possessed by them.'

'But he would say--and I should believe him--that he has seen and
known them, not with his bodily eyes, but with his soul, heart,
imagination--call it what you will. All I know is, that between him
and me there is a great gulf fixed.'

'What! seen and known them utterly? comprehended them? Are they not
infinite, incomprehensible? Can the less comprehend the greater?'

'He knows, at least, enough of them to make him what I am not.'

'That is, he knows something of them. And may not you know
something of them also?--enough to make you what he is not?'

Lancelot shook his head in silence.

'Suppose that you had met and spoken with your father, and loved him
when you saw him, and yet were not aware of the relation in which
you stood to him, still you would know him?'

'Not the most important thing of all--that he was my father.'

'Is that the most important thing? Is it not more important that he
should know that you were his son? That he should support, guide,
educate you, even though unseen? Do you not know that some one has
been doing that?'

'That I have been supported, guided, educated, I know full well; but
by whom I know not. And I know, too, that I have been punished.
And therefore--therefore I cannot free the thought of a Him--of a
Person--only of a Destiny, of Laws and Powers, which have no faces
wherewith to frown awful wrath upon me! If it be a Person who has
been leading me, I must go mad, or know that He has forgiven!'

'I conceive that it is He, and not punishment which you fear?'

Lancelot was silent a moment. . . . 'Yes. He, and not hell at all,
is what I fear. He can inflict no punishment on me worse than the
inner hell which I have felt already, many and many a time.'

'Bona verba! That is an awful thing to say: but better this
extreme than the other. . . . And you would--what?'

'Be pardoned.'

'If He loves you, He has pardoned you already.'

'How do I know that He loves me?'

'How does Tregarv