And character—­soul—­can only be got by self-surrender; and self-surrender comes not of knowledge but of love.

A number of thoughts and phrases, hitherto of little meaning to her, floated into her mind—­sank and pressed there.  That strange word “grace” for instance!

A year ago it would not have smitten or troubled her.  After her first inevitable reaction against the evangelical training of her school years, the rebellious cleverness of youth had easily decided that religion was played out, that Socialism and Science were enough for mankind.

But nobody could live in hospital—­nobody could go among the poor—­nobody could share the thoughts and hopes of people like Edward Hallin and his sister, without understanding that it is still here in the world—­this “grace” that “sustaineth”—­however variously interpreted, still living and working, as it worked of old, among the little Galilean towns, in Jerusalem, in Corinth.  To Edward Hallin it did not mean the same, perhaps, as it meant to the hard-worked clergymen she knew, or to Mrs. Jervis.  But to all it meant the motive power of life—­something subduing, transforming, delivering—­something that to-night she envied with a passion and a yearning that amazed herself.

How many things she craved, as an eager child craves them!  First some moral change, she knew not what—­then Aldous Raeburn’s pardon and friendship—­then and above all, the power to lose herself—­the power to love.

Dangerous significant moment in a woman’s life—­moment at once of despair and of illusion!

CHAPTER VIII.

Wharton was sitting in a secluded corner of the library of the House of Commons.  He had a number of loose sheets of paper on a chair beside him, and others in his hand and on his knee.  It was Friday afternoon; questions were going on in the House; and he was running rapidly for the last time through the notes of his speech, pencilling here and there, and every now and then taking up a volume of Hansard that lay near that he might verify a quotation.

An old county member, with a rugged face and eye-glasses, who had been in Parliament for a generation, came to the same corner to look up a speech.  He glanced curiously at Wharton, with whom he had a familiar House-of-Commons acquaintance.

“Nervous, eh?” he said, as he put on his eye-glasses to inspect first Wharton, then the dates on the backs of the Reports.

Wharton put his papers finally together, and gave a long stretch.

“Not particularly.”

“Well, it’s a beastly audience!” said the other, carrying off his book.

Wharton, lost apparently in contemplation of the ceiling, fell into a dreamy attitude.  But his eye saw nothing of the ceiling, and was not at all dreamy.  He was not thinking of his speech, nor of the other man’s remark.  He was thinking of Marcella Boyce.