‘Dost thou really believe, Dorothy,’ he asked one day, ’that a man ever did love his enemy?  Didst thou ever know one who did?’

‘I cannot say I ever did,’ returned Dorothy.  ’I have however seen few that were enemies.  But I am sure that had it not been possible, we should never have been commanded thereto.’

’The last time Dr. Bayly came to see me he read those words, and I thought within myself all the time of the only enemy I had, and tried to forgive him, but could not.’

‘Had he then wronged thee so deeply?’

’I know not, indeed, what women call wronged—­least of all what thou, who art not like other women, wouldst judge; but this thing seems to me strange—­that when I look on thee, Dorothy, one moment it seems as if for thy sake I could forgive him anything—­except that he slew me not outright, and the next that never can I forgive him even that wherein he never did me any wrong.’

’What! hatest thou then him that struck thee down in fair fight?  Sure thou art of meaner soul than I judged thee.  What man in battle-field hates his enemy, or thinks it less than enough to do his endeavour to slay him?’

’Know’st thou whom thou wouldst have me forgive?  He who struck me down was thy friend, Richard Heywood.’

‘Then he hath his mare again?’ cried Dorothy, eagerly.

Rowland’s face fell, and she knew that she had spoken heartlessly—­knew also that, for all his protestations, Rowland yet cherished the love she had so plainly refused.  But the same moment she knew something more.

For, by the side of Rowland, in her mind’s eye, stood Henry Vaughan, as wise as Rowland was foolish, as accomplished and learned as Rowland was narrow and ignorant; but between them stood Richard, and she knew a something in her which was neither tenderness nor reverence, and yet included both.  She rose in some confusion, and left the chamber.

This good came of it, that from that moment Scudamore was satisfied she loved Heywood, and, with much mortification, tried to accept his position.  Slowly his health began to return, and slowly the deeper life that was at length to become his began to inform him.

Heartless and poverty-stricken as he had hitherto shown himself, the good in him was not so deeply buried under refuse as in many a better-seeming man.  Sickness had awakened in him a sense of requirement—­of need also, and loneliness, and dissatisfaction.  He grew ashamed of himself and conscious of defilement.  Something new began to rise above and condemn the old.  There are who would say that the change was merely the mental condition resulting from and corresponding to physical weakness; that repentance, and the vision of the better which maketh shame, is but a mood, sickly as are the brain and nerves which generate it; but he who undergoes the experience believes he knows better, and denies neither the wild beasts nor the stars, because they roar and shine through the dark.