hopeless brooding upon the face and the form, yea the heart and soul
of the woman he so fain would help, until ere long he loved her with
the passion of a man mingled with the compassion of a prophet. He
saw that something had to be done IN her--perhaps that some saving
shock in the guise of ruin had to visit her; that some door had to
be burst open, some roof blown away, some rock blasted, that light
and air might have free course through her soul's house, without
which that soul could never grow stately like the house it
inhabited. Whatever might be destined to effect this, for the chance
of rendering poorest and most servile aid, he would watch and did
watch, in silence and self-restraint, lest he should be betrayed
into any presumptuous word that might breathe frost instead of balm
upon the buds of her delaying Spring. If he might but be allowed to
minister when at length the sleeping soul should stir! If its waking
glance--ah! if it might fall on him! As often as the thought
intruded, his heart would give one delirious bound, then couch
ashamed of its presumption. He would not, he dared not look in that
direction. He accused himself of mingling earthly motives and
feelings with the unselfish and true, and scorned himself because of
it. And was not Bascombe already the favoured friend of her heart?

Yet how could it be of her heart? for what concern had hearts in a
common unbelief? None; but there were the hearts--the man and the
woman--notwithstanding, who might yet well be drawn together by the
unknown divine which they also shared; and that Helen, whose foot
seemed now to approach and now to shun the line betwixt the kingdom
of this world and the kingdom of heaven, should retire with such a
guide into the deserts of denial and chosen godlessness, was to
Wingfold a thought of torture almost unendurable. The thought of its
possibility, nay, probability--for were not such unfitnesses