may in blood and tears!  You have the choice between that and ruin, and before God you shall choose the right!  Listen to me, Helen—­it is only prayer that can do it, it is only by prayer that you can fight this fearful battle—­bring before you this truth of the soul, and hold on to it,—­hold on to it tho it kill you!  For He was through all the ages, His glory is of the skies; and we are but for an instant, and we have to die; and this we must know, or we are lost!  There comes pain, and calls you back to fear and doubt; and you fight—­oh, it is a cruel fight, it is like a wild beast at your vitals,—­but still you hold on—­you hold on!”

The man had lifted himself with a wild effort, his hands clenched and his teeth set.  He had caught the girl’s hands in his, and she screamed in fear:  “David, David!  You will kill yourself!”

“Yes, yes!” he answered, and rushed on, chokingly; “it is coming just so; for I have just force enough left to win—­just force enough to save you,—­and then it will rend this frame of mine in two!  It comes like a clutch at my heart—­it blinds me, and the sky seems to turn to fire——­”

He sank back with a gasp; Helen caught him to her bosom, exclaiming frantically, “Oh, David, spare me—­wait!  Not now—­you cannot bear it—­have mercy!”

He lay for a long time motionless, seemingly half dazed; then he whispered faintly, “Yes, dear, yes; let us wait.  But oh, if you could know the terror of another defeat, of sinking down and letting one’s self be bound in the old chains—­I must not lose, Helen, I dare not fail!”

“Listen, David,” whispered Helen, beginning suddenly with desperate swiftness; “why should you fail?  Why can you not listen to me, pity me, wait until you are strong?  You have won, you will not forget—­and is there no peace, can you not rest in this faith, and fear no more?” The man seemed to Helen to be half out of his mind for the moment; she was trying to manage him with a kind of frenzied cunning.  As she went on whispering and imploring she saw that David’s exhaustion was gradually overcoming him more and more, and that he was sinking farther and farther back from his wild agitation.  At last after she had continued thus for a while he closed his eyes and began breathing softly.  “Yes, dear,” he whispered; “yes; I will be quiet.  There has come to my soul to-night a peace that is not for words; I can be still, and know that He is God, and that He is holy.”

His voice dropped lower each instant, the girl in the meantime soothing him and stroking his forehead and pleading with him in a shuddering voice, her heart wild with fright.  When at last he was quite still, and the fearful vision, that had been like a nightmare to her, was gone with all its storm and its madness, she took him upon her lap, just as she had done before, and sat there clasping him in her arms while the time fled by unheeded.  It was long afterwards—­the sun was gleaming across the lake and in at the window—­before at last her trembling prayer was answered, and he sank into an exhausted slumber.