“That is only human nature, so don’t be troubled.  We are all compasses pointing due north.  We get shaken often, and the needle varies in spite of us; but the minute we are quiet, it points right, and we have only to follow it.”

“The keeping quiet is just what I cannot do.  Tour mother shows me how lovely it is, and I try to imitate it; but this restless soul of mine will ask questions and doubt and fear, and worry me in many ways.  What shall I do to keep it still?” asked Christie, smiling, yet earnest.

“Let it alone:  you cannot force these things, and the best way is to wait till the attraction is strong enough to keep the needle steady.  Some people get their ballast slowly, some don’t need much, and some have to work hard for theirs.”

“Did you?” asked Christie; for David’s voice fell a little, as he uttered the last words.

“I have not got much yet.”

“I think you have.  Why, David, you are always cheerful and contented, good and generous.  If that is not true piety, what is?”

“You are very much deceived, and I am sorry for it,” said David, with the impatient gesture of the head, and a troubled look.

“Prove it!” And Christie looked at him with such sincere respect and regard, that his honest nature would not let him accept it, though it gratified him much.

He made no answer for a minute.  Then he said slowly, as if feeling a modest man’s hesitation to speak of himself, yet urged to it by some irresistible impulse: 

“I will prove it if you won’t mind the unavoidable egotism; for I cannot let you think me so much better than I am.  Outwardly I seem to you ‘cheerful, contented, generous, and good.’  In reality I am sad, dissatisfied, bad, and selfish:  see if I’m not.  I often tire of this quiet life, hate my work, and long to break away, and follow my own wild and wilful impulses, no matter where they lead.  Nothing keeps me at such times but my mother and God’s patience.”

David began quietly; but the latter part of this confession was made with a sudden impetuosity that startled Christie, so utterly unlike his usual self-control was it.  She could only look at him with the surprise she felt.  His face was in the shadow; but she saw that it was flushed, his eyes excited, and in his voice she heard an undertone that made it sternly self-accusing.

“I am not a hypocrite,” he went on rapidly, as if driven to speak in spite of himself.  “I try to be what I seem, but it is too hard sometimes and I despair.  Especially hard is it to feel that I have learned to feign happiness so well that others are entirely deceived.  Mr. Power and mother know me as I am:  other friends I have not, unless you will let me call you one.  Whether you do or not after this, I respect you too much to let you delude yourself about my virtues, so I tell you the truth and abide the consequences.”

He looked up at her as he paused, with a curious mixture of pride and humility in his face, and squared his broad shoulders as if he had thrown off a burden that had much oppressed him.