“They will be too strong for you anywhere, if you are a coward!”—­ said Walden, impetuously.  “Brent, I thought you had gotten the victory over this old despair of yours long ago!  I thought you had made the memory of the woman you loved a noble spur to noble actions!  I never dreamed that it would be possible for you to brood silently on your sorrow till you made it a cause of protest against God’s will!  And worst and strangest of all is this frenzied idea of yours to fly to the Church of Rome for shelter from yourself and your secret misery, and there give yourself over to monasticism and a silent, idolatrous worship,—­not of Mary, the Mother of Christ,—­ but of the mere picture of the woman you loved!  And you would pray to that?—­you would kneel before that?—­you would pass long hours of fasting and vigil, gazing at that face, till, like the ‘stigmata,’ it is almost outlined in blood upon your heart?  My dear Brent, is it possible your brain is so shaken and your soul so feeble that you must needs seek refuge in a kind of half-spiritual, half-sensuous passion, which is absolute rank blasphemy?”

At this the Bishop raised his head with an air of imperious authority.

“I cannot permit!—–­” he said, in unsteady accents—­“You have no right to speak to me in such a tone—­it is not your place—–­”

Then, suddenly, his voice broke, and throwing himself into his chair, he dropped his head forward on the desk and covered it with his hands in an attitude of the utmost abandonment and dejection.  The moisture rose to Walden’s eyes,—­he knew the great tragedy of his friend’s life—­all comprised in one brief, romantic episode of the adoring love, and sudden loss of a beautiful woman drowned by accident in her own pleasure-boat on the very eve of her marriage with him,—­and be knew that just as deep and ardent as the man’s passion had been, so deep and ardent was his sorrow—­a sorrow that could never be consoled.  And John sat silent, deeply moved in himself, and ever and anon glancing upwards at the exquisite face of the painted Virgin above him,—­the face of the dead girl whom her lover had thus sanctified.  Presently Brent raised his head,—­his face was white and worn—­his eyes were wet.

“Forgive me, John!” he said—­“I have been working hard of late, and my nerves are unstrung.  And—­I cannot, I cannot forget her!  And what is more awful and terrible to me than anything is that I cannot forgive God!” He uttered these words in an awed whisper.  “I cannot!  I bear the Almighty a grudge for wrenching her life away from mine!  Of what use was it to be so cruel?  Of what purpose to kill one so young?  If God is omnipotent, God could have saved her.  But He let her die!  I tell you, Walden, that ever since I have been Bishop of this diocese, I have tried to relieve sorrow and pain whenever I have met with it—­I have striven to do my duty, hoping against hope that perhaps God would teach me—­would explain the why and wherefore of so much needless