Page:Comin' Thro' the Rye (1898).djvu/444

436 trembling, the danger of the hour. It bids me put all my armour on, since love that is lawful strengthens, and love that is unlawful makes men and women alike weak as water—ay! better and stronger ones than are Paul and I.

And since I know my danger, and meet it, not hiding my countenance from it as a phantom that a lying spirit would tell me does not exist, I show a fairer courage than he who vaingloriously goes forth to battle trusting in his own strength, without sending up one prayer for safety.

This night, then, is my breathing space, and in it I will struggle to convince myself that to disobey any natural beautiful instinct of my heart is virtue—to indulge every irresistible impulse and longing, sın; to make my heart cold and hard as steel, my eyes blind and dull as those of a mole; to transform myself from a creature of flesh and blood, subject to human passions, to a chill, blank automaton. Then, maybe, I shall be able to meet him, not as my lost, lost lover, but as the husband of another woman. This is my task.

O Night, your hours are long and silent, and the faint daybreak of the morning comes not yet.

is Sunday morning, and all Silverbridge that is not bed-ridden, infidel, and naked, is sitting in church listening to Mr. Skipworth's droning voice that makes up in sound what it lacks in sense. The chancel door is open, and through it my eyes, weary of gazing at the vacuous rotundity of my pastor and master's countenance,