Whether Tom was altogether right or not, is not the question here; the novelist’s business is to represent the real thoughts of mankind, when they are not absolutely unfit to be told; and certainly Tom spoke the doubts of thousands when he spoke his own.

Grace was silent still.

“Well,” he said, “beyond that I can’t go, being no theologian.  But when a preacher tells people in one breath of a God who so loves men that He gave His own Son to save them, and in the next, that the same God so hates men that He will cast nine-tenths of them into hopeless torture for ever,—­(and if that is not hating, I don’t know what is),—­unless he, the preacher, gets a chance of talking to them for a few minutes—­Why, I should like, Miss Harvey, to put that gentleman upon a real fire for ten minutes, instead of his comfortable Sunday’s dinner, which stands ready frying for him, and which he was going home to eat, as jolly as if all the world was not going to destruction; and there let him feel what fire was like, and reconsider his statements.”

Grace looked up at him no more; but walked on in silence, pondering many things.

“Howsoever that may be, sir, tell me what to do in this cholera, and I will do it, if I kill myself with work or infection!”

“You shan’t do that.  We cannot spare you from Aberalva, Grace,” said Tom; “you must save a few more poor creatures ere you die, out of the hands of that Good Being who made little children, and love, and happiness, and the flowers, and the sunshine, and the fruitful earth; and who, you say, redeemed them all again, when they were lost, by an act of love which passes all human dreams.”

“Do not talk so!” cried Grace.  “It frightens me; it puzzles me, and makes me miserable.  Oh, if you would but become a Christian!”

“And listen to the Gospel?”

“Yes—­oh yes!”

“A gospel means good news, I thought.  When you have any to tell me, I will listen.  Meanwhile, the news that three out of four of those poor fellows down town are going to a certain place, seems to me such terribly bad news, that I can’t help fancying that it is not the Gospel at all; and so get on the best way I can, listening to the good news about God which this grand old world, and my microscope, and my books, tell me.  No, Grace, I have more good news than that, and I’ll confess it to you.”

He paused, and his voice softened.

“Say what the preacher may.  He must be a good God who makes such creatures as you, and sends them into the world to comfort poor wretches.  Follow your own sweet heart, Grace, and torment yourself no more with these dark dreams!”

“My heart?” cried she, looking down; “it is deceitful and desperately wicked.”

“I wish mine were too, then,” said Tom:  “but it cannot be, as long as it is so unlike yours.  Now stop, Grace, I want to speak to you.”

There was a gate in front of them, leading into the road.