CHAPTER IV.


Mr. Greatorex had ceased to regard the advent of Christmas with much
interest. Naturally gifted with a strong religious tendency, he had,
since his first marriage, taken, not to denial, but to the side of
objection, spending much energy in contempt for the foolish opinions
of others, a self-indulgence which does less than little to further
the growth of one's own spirit in truth and righteousness. The only
person who stands excused--I do not say justified--in so doing, is the
man who, having been taught the same opinions, has found them a legion
of adversaries barring his way to the truth. But having got rid of
them for himself, it is, I suspect, worse than useless to attack them
again, save as the ally of those who are fighting their way through
the same ranks to the truth. Greatorex had been indulging his
intellect at the expense of his heart. A man may have light in the
brain and darkness in the heart. It were better to be an owl than a
strong-eyed apteryx. He was on the path which naturally ends in
blindness and unbelief. I fancy, if he had not been neglectful of his
child, she would ere this time have relighted his Christmas-candles
for him; but now his second disappointment in marriage had so dulled
his heart that he had begun to regard life as a stupid affair, in
which the most enviable fool was the man who could still expect to
realize an ideal. He had set out on a false track altogether, but had
not yet discovered that there had been an immoral element at work in
his mistake.

For what right had he to desire the fashioning of any woman after his
ideas? did not the angel of her eternal Ideal for ever behold the face
of her Father in heaven? The best that can be said for him is, that,