h stupefied with drink. Don't you know the poor
creatures in the Eastend sometimes drink just that they may not feel how
hungry and how cold they are? 'They remember their misery no more.' Is
the life of the world and of outward things like that, if we live too
much in it? I used to be so contented with it all--its pleasures, its
little triumphs, even its gossip; and what I called my aspirations I
satisfied with what was nothing more than phrases. And now I have found
my real self, now I am awake, I want much more, and there is
nothing--only a great silence, a great loneliness like that in the
face. And the theories I talked about are no comfort any more; they are
just what pretty speeches would be to a person in torture. Oh, Mr.
Lyndsay, I always feel that you are real, that you are good; tell me
what you know. Is there nothing but this dark void beyond when life
falls away from us?"

She lifted towards me a face quivering with excitement, and eyes that
waited wild and famished for my answer--the answer I had not for her,
and then indeed I tasted the full bitterness of the cup of unbelief.

"No," she said presently, "I knew it; no one can do me any good but
Cecilia de Noel."

"And she believes?"

"It is not what she believes, it is what she is."

She rested her head upon her hand and looked musingly towards the
window, down which the drops were trickling, and said--

"Ever since I have known Cecilia I have always felt that if all the
world failed this would be left. Not that I really imagined the world
would fail me, but you know how one imagines things, how one asks
oneself questions. If I was like this, if I was like that, what should I
do? I used to say to myself, if the very worst happened to me, if I was
ill of some loathsome disease from which everybody shrank away, or if my
mind was unhinged and I was tempted with horrible temptations like I
have read about, I would go to Cecilia. She would not turn from me; she
would run to meet me as the father in the parable did, not because I was
her friend but because I was in trouble. All who are in trouble are
Cecilia's friends, and she feels to them just as other people feel
towards their own children. And I could tell her everything, show her
everything. Others feel the same; I have heard them say so--men as well
as women. I know why--Cecilia's pity is so reverent, so pure. A great
London doctor said to me once, 'Remember, nothing is shocking or
disgusting to a d