for months and months her father was before her eyes and she could
not convince herself that he was not with her. But she went no
further towards Roman Catholicism. She let the facts stand. Once
when she was walking on the moors she stretched out her arms again
and was urged to pray, but she felt that her prayer would be loss of
strength and she stood erect. For nearly a twelvemonth she simply
endured. She remembered a story in an old Amulet, one of a series
of annuals, bound in crimson cloth and fashionable at that time, of
a sailor stranded on a rock in the sea. The waves rose to his lips,
but he threw back his head, and at that moment there was a pause and
the tide turned. It might turn for her or it might not; she must
not move. She read scarcely any books and lived much in the open
air. The autumn was one of extraordinary splendour. September
rains after a dry summer washed the air and filled the tarns and
becks. Wherever she went she was accompanied by that most delicious
sound of falling waters. The clouds, which through July and August
had been nothing but undefined, barren vapour, gathered themselves
together and the interspaces of sky were once more brilliantly blue.
Day after day earth and heaven were almost too beautiful, for it was
painful that her finite apprehension should be unequal to such
infinite loveliness. She received no such answer as that for which
she hoped when she knelt by the grey rock, but that is the way with
the celestial powers; they reply to our passionate demands by
putting them aside and giving us that for which we did not ask. WE
KNOW NOT HOW TO PRAY AS WE OUGHT.



MR. WHITTAKER'S RETIREMENT