But what is love, what is loss,
what defilement even, what are pains, and hopes, and
disappointments, what sorrow, and death, and all the ills that
flesh is heir to, but means to this very end, to this waking of
the soul to seek the home of our being--the life eternal? Verily
we must be born from above, and be good children, or become, even
to our self-loving selves, a scorn, a hissing, and an endless
reproach.
If they had had but Mary to talk to them! But they did not want
her: she was a good sort of creature, who, with all her
disagreeableness, meant them well, and whom they had misjudged a
little and made cry! They had no suspicion that she was one of
the lights of the world--one of the wells of truth, whose springs
are fed by the rains on the eternal hills.
Turning a clump of furze-bushes on the common, they met Mary. She
stepped from the path. Mr. Wardour took off his hat. Then Mary
knew that his wrath was past, and she was glad.
They stopped. "Well, Mary," said Hesper, holding out her hand,
and speaking in a tone from which both haughtiness and
condescension had vanished, "where are you going?"
"To meet my husband," answered Mary. "I see him coming."
With a deep, loving look at Hesper, and a bow and a smile to
Godfrey, she left them, and hastened to meet her working-man.
Behind Godfrey Wardour and Hesper Redmain walked Joseph Jasper
and Mary Marston, a procession of love toward a far-off, eternal
goal.
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