“I will tell you” he said, “because I love you.  I don’t like to show it to them; but I’ve been frightened, Grace, for the first time in my life.”

She paused for an explanation; but she did not straggle to escape from him.

“Frightened; beat; run to earth myself, though I talked so bravely of running others to earth just now.  Grace, I’ve been in prison!”

“In prison?  In a Russian prison?  Oh, Mr. Thurnall!”

“Ay, Grace, I’d tried everything but that; and I could not stand it.  Death was a joke to that.  Not to be able to get out!—­To rage up and down for hours like a wild beast; long to fly at one’s gaoler and tear his heart out;—­beat one’s head against the wall in the hope of knocking one’s brains out;—­anything to get rid of that horrid notion, night and day over one—­I can’t get out!”

Grace had never seen him so excited.

“But you are safe now,” said she soothingly.  “Oh, those horrid Russians!”

“But it was not Russians!—­If it had been, I could have borne it.—­That was all in my bargain,—­the fair chance of war:  but to be shut up by a mistake!—­at the very outset, too—­by a boorish villain of a khan, on a drunken suspicion;—­a fellow whom I was trying to serve, and who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, or daren’t understand me—­Oh, Grace, I was caught in my own trap!  I went out full blown with self-conceit.  Never was any one so cunning as I was to be!—­Such a game as I was going to play, and make my fortune by it!—­And this brute to stop me short—­to make a fool of me—­to keep me there eighteen months threatening to cut my head off once a quarter, and wouldn’t understand me, let me talk with the tongue of the old serpent!”

“He didn’t stop you:  God stopped you!”

“You’re right, Grace; I saw that at last!  I found out that I had been trying for years which was the stronger, God or I; I found out I had been trying whether I could not do well enough without Him:  and there I found that I could not, Grace;—­could not!  I felt like a child who had marched off from home, fancying it can find its way, and is lost at once.  I felt like a lost child in Australia once, for one moment:  but not as I felt in that prison; for I had not heard you, Grace, then.  I did not know that I had a Father in heaven, who had been looking after me, when I fancied that I was looking after myself;—­I don’t half believe it now—­If I did, I should not have lost my nerve as I have done!—­Grace, I dare hardly stir about now, lest some harm should come to me.  I fancy at every turn, what if that chimney fell? what if that horse kicked out?—­and, Grace, you, and you only, can cure me of my new cowardice.  I said in that prison, and all the way home,—­if I can but find her!—­let me but see her—­ask her—­let her teach me; and I shall be sure!  Let her teach me, and I shall be brave again!  Teach me, Grace! and forgive me!”

Grace was looking at him with her great soft eyes opening slowly, like a startled hind’s, as if the wonder and delight were too great to be taken in at once.  The last words unlocked her lips.