"The vision," he said, "is born with each of us, and though we lose it
again and again, yet again and again it comes back and beckons, calls,
and the voice thrills us always. And we must follow, or lose the way.
Through ice and flame we must follow. And no one may look across where
another soul moves on a quick, straight path and think that the way is
easier for the other. No one can see if the rocks are not cutting his
friend's feet; no one can know what burning lands he has crossed to
follow, to be so close to his angel, his messenger. Believe always that
every other life has been more tempted, more tried than your own;
believe that the lives higher and better than your own are so not
through more ease, but more effort; that the lives lower than yours are
so through less opportunity, more trial. Believe that your friend with
peace in his heart has won it, not happened on it--that he has fought
your very fight. So the mist will melt from your eyes and you will see
clearer the vision of your life and the way it leads you; selfishness
will fall from your shoulders and you will follow lightly. And at the
end, and along the way you will have the glory of effort, the joy of
fighting and winning, the beauty of the heights where only an ideal can
take you."

What more he said Fielding did not hear--for him one sentence had been
the final word. The unlaid ghost of the Bishop's puzzling talk an hour
before rose up and from its lips came, as if in full explanation, "He
has fought your very fight." He sat in his shadowy, dark corner of the
cool, little stone church, and while the congregation rose and knelt and
sang and prayed, he was still. Piece by piece he fitted the mosaic of
past and present, and each bit slipped faultlessly into place. There was
no question in his mind now as to the fact, and his manliness and honor
rushed to meet the situation. He had said that where his friend had gone
he would go. If it was down the road of renunciation of a life-long