And the answer was thundered and yet whispered through his consciousness.  Is was God’s plot, God’s Will, God’s demand, that he should do the impossible and behave like a saint!

Mark had said easily enough in the first noble instinct of bearing his blow well:  “We are God’s slaves.”  But that first light had gradually been obscured.  He had not felt then that the impossible was demanded of him.  He had come to feel it, and to feel it without remembering that man’s helplessness was God’s opportunity.  Had he forgotten, erased from the tablets of his mind and heart, all he had loved and trusted most?  Now all was terribly clear.  Augustine, in a decadent, delicate age, had not minced matters, and had insisted that all hope must be placed in Him Who would not spare the scourge.  “Oftentimes,” he had cried, “does our Tamer bring forth His scourge too.”  Mark took down the old, worn book.

“In Him let us place our hope, and until we are tamed and tamed thoroughly—­that is, are perfected—­let us bear our Tamer....  Whereas, when thou art tamed, God reserveth for thee an inheritance which is God Himself....  For God will then be all in all; neither will there be any unhappiness to exercise us, but happiness alone to feed us....  What multiplicity of things soever thou seekest here, He alone will be Himself all these things to thee.

“Unto this hope is man tamed, and shall his Tamer then be deemed intolerable?  Unto this hope is man tamed, and shall he murmur against his beneficient Tamer, if He chance to use the scourge?...

“Whether, therefore, Thou dealest softly with us that we be not wearied in the way, or chastisest us that we wander not from the way, Thou art become our refuge, O Lord.”

As Mark read, the pain of too great light was softened to him.  What had been hard, white light, glowed more rosy until it flushed his horizon with full glory.

It wanted a small space in time, but a mighty change in the spirit, before Mark read Edmund’s letter with a keen wish to enter into its full meaning, and judge it wisely.  Having come to himself, he was, as ever, ready to give that self away.  He was full of a strange energy; he smiled to feel that the strokes of the lash were unfelt, while consciousness was lost in love.  This was God’s anaesthetic.  But it thrilled the soul with vitality, and in no sense but the absence of pain did it suspend the faculties.  He had no doubt, no hesitation, as to what he must do.  He would go to Molly, he must see her at once, but not a word should pass his lips of what Edmund wanted him to say.  Not a moment must be lost.  Who might not betray her danger and destroy her opportunity?  Molly must be brought to do this thing of herself without any admixture of fear, without any aim or object but to sacrifice all for what was right.  He yearned with utter simplicity that this might be her way out.  Let her do it for herself.  Let her do it of herself, thought