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d shaken his head very gravely over her. For a week or more she had grown steadily worse, and was now unable even to walk without help. Her malady was one of those that sap away the life with a swift and deadly power against which all human skill seems unavailing.
She started as she heard his footstep, and turned her head quickly toward him, a faint flush tinging her cheek and a forced smile quivering around her lips. Her greeting was very gentle, and he saw that her heart was reproaching her for being so disloyal to him as to think of her lost lover; and yet he felt her fingers tremble and shrink away from his as he took her hand.
"God forgive me!" he thought, with infinite self-accusation. "How repugnant I must be to her,--an intruder, thrusting myself into the heart that is sacred to the dead."
But he let her see nothing of this in his voice or manner as he inquired how she had been. She replied wearily that she was no better, that she longed to get well again and be at work.
"I missed your sermon to-day," she said, with that strained, pathetic smile upon her lips again. "You must tell me about it now."
He drew his chair to her side and began to give an outline of the sermon. She listened, but it was with forced attention, without sympathy, without in the least entering into the spirit of what he was saying. It pained him. He knew that her nature was so narrow, so conventional, that it was impossible for her to comprehend his grand scheme of Indian evangelization. But he checked his impatience, and gave her a full synopsis of the discourse.
"It is useless, useless. They cannot understand. A whole race is perishing around them, and they will not put forth a hand save to mistreat a Quaker or throw a stone at a Churchman. Our Puritanism is like iron to resist tyranny,--but alas! it is like iron, too, when one tries to bend it to some generous undertaking."
He stopped, checking back other and more bitter words. All his soul rose up in revolt against the prejudice by which he was surrounded. Then Ruth spoke timidly.
"Seeing that it is so, would it not be best to let this missionary subject go, and preach on practical every-day matters? I am not wise in these things, I know; but would it not be better to preach on common subjects, showing us how we ought to live from day to day, than to discourse of those larger things that the people do not understand?"
His face darkened, though not angrily. This was the same prejudice he had just encountered in the meeting-house, though in a different form. He arose and paced back and forth with quick, impatient steps. Then he came and stood before her with folded arms and resolute face.
"Ruth, I have tried that so often, tried it with prayers and tears, but it is utterly impossible. I cannot bring myself to it. You know what the physicians say of my disease of the heart,--that my life may be very short; and I want it to be noble. I want to live for the greatest possibilities within my reach. I want to set some great work in motion that will light up thousands of darkened lives,--yea, and grow in might and power even after my lips are sealed in death."
The little figure on the chair moved uneasily under his animated though kindly gaze.
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