"How a mistake?" she asked.

It was a very hard question to answer. A moment before and he thought he
had seen what the mistake was and how to speak, but when he tried, all
that manifold difficulty of applying that which is eternal to that which
is temporal came between his thought and its expression.

He could not know clearly wherein his difficulty lay; no one had taught
him about the Pantheism which obliterates moral distinctions, or told
him of the subjective ideal which sweeps aside material delight. He only
felt after the realities expressed by these phrases, and dimly perceived
that truth lies midway between them, and that truth is the mind of God,
and can only be lived, not spoken. For a while he lay there in the
darkness, trying to think how he could tell Ann that to his eyes all
things had become new; after a little while he did try to tell her, and
although the words were lame, and apparently contradictory to much that
they both knew was also true, still some small measure of his meaning
passed into her mind.

"God is different from what I ever thought," he said; "He isn't in some
things and not in others; it's wicked to live so as to make people think
that, for they think they can get outside of Him, and then they don't
mind Him at all."

"How do you know it?" she asked curiously.

"I saw it. Perhaps God showed me because I was so hard up. It's God's
truth, Ann, that I am saying."