mplation.

The sad things he came in daily contact with had conquered his faith in
life, though they had not succeeded in killing his trust in God's
eventual plan of redemption; and his mind wandered in terrible places,
places he had forced his way into, places he could never forget. He
suffered from all a reformer's agony, an agony that is the small
reflection of the great story of the mystic burden heavy as the sins of
the whole world, and he tried, out of the simple, childlike fancy of the
words he read, to grasp at a better mind.

Heath was one of those men who could not understand effortless faith; he
was crushed by his own lack of success, and bowed down by his own
failure. Since he could not rout the enemy single-handed, he believed
that the battle was against the Hosts of the Lord. He knew no leisure
from the war of his own thoughts, and as he clasped his hands, his face
grew tense and set, and his eyes haggard and terrible. For a moment he
sat very still, and his eyes followed the lines written by a man who had
the faith of a little child:

"But Time did beckon to the flowers, and they,
By noon, most cunningly did steal away."

Heath had never gathered flowers, either as a lesson to himself or a
gift for others; they hardly spoke of careless beauty to him, they were
emblems of lightness and thoughtlessness, and Heath had no time to stop
and consider the lilies of the field.

He moved suddenly like a man who is awakened from a thought heavier than
sleep, and listened with a hunted look, the look of a man who is afraid
of footsteps; he stood up, gathering his loose limbs together and
watching the door. Steps came up the staircase, steps that stumbled a
little, and if Heath had possessed Mhtoon Pah's art of reading the walk
of his fellow creatures, he would have known that he might expect a
woman and not a man.

"Mr. Heath," a low voice called in the passage, and Heath's tension
relaxed, giving place to surprise.

The voice was strange to him, and he passed his handkerchief over his
face and walked to the door, just as his name was called again, in the
same low, penetrating voice.

"Who wants me?" he asked, almost roughly, and then he saw a tall, dark
woman standing at the top of the staircase.

"Mrs. Wilder," he said in surprise, and she made a little imperious
movement with her hand.

"I did not call your servant, I came up, because I wanted to find you
alone. You are alone?"

"Certainly,