Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/62

50 for what you wrote I thank you. It was like a voice coming from the happiest period of my life. I answer you the only way that seems to me worthy of our old relationship, so true, so pure, so noble. Do not think me harsh and Pharisaical. I do not judge you—no, not for a minute. God knows I have had temptations enough in these years of dark and desperate combat, and there have been times when I came near to yielding. For to me, too, beauty and knowledge are very dear—art and music, literature and science. I too would "fain occupy myself with the abiding." But that, I think, can never be. That must be for our children's children, if even for them. But whenever it be, provided only that it be—not for a handful of them—not for a few—no, nor even for many of them, but for all—then I should indeed be content! Oh, it is worth fighting and dying a thousand times to possess such a hope!

'My friend, once more, your hand—for the last time. Good-bye.

Later in the next afternoon, sitting alone in the Russell Square boarding-house, in his bare and comfortless room, and thoroughly wearied out by a hard