Page:Henry Northcote (IA henrynorthcote00snairich).pdf/192

 *ion of the voice and the power of the coincidence were overmastering.

"There is no accounting for these things," he said, in a voice throbbing with excitement. "At the same hour I also had a strange, an almost terrible sort of vision."

"Yes, my deliverer, you have been called into my life to save it—to save that life which never had a perfect thought until it was brought into prison. It did not know what the trees and the sky were, nor the air and the birds; never had it heard a deep voice nor touched a strong hand. You are he that leaped out of the vast multitude that mocked me in my dream, he who stood up before it, and, with a great voice that sounded like the waves of the sea, caused them all to break and run. They grew afraid of your words and your looks, and they fled in terror. Yes, my life has become so full of beauty and meaning, so full of a spacious mystery, that I cannot believe it is to be taken away."

These words, breathed rather than spoken, sounded in the ear of Northcote as those of a transcendent sanity. Remote as they were, they yet appeared divinely appropriate to the time and place. But they left only one course for him to follow. He must detach himself from the unhappy speaker of them; he must flee her presence. Their edge was too keen. There would be no advocacy on the morrow if he yielded to the subtle enervation of this atmosphere. The voice pierced him like a passion, yet his veins had grown sluggish and heavy, as if under the influence of a drug.