look, nor turned his eyes away, but let the tears gather and flow.
The first agonies of the encounter of life and death were over, and
life was slowly wasting away. Oh what might not a little joy do for
him! But where was the joy to be found that could irradiate such a
darkness even for one fair memorial moment?

One hot noon Wingfold lay beside him on the grass. Neither had
spoken for some time: the curate more and more shrunk from speech to
which his heart was not directly moved. As to what might be in
season or out of season, he never would pretend to judge, he said,
but even Balaam's ass knew when he had a call to speak. He plucked a
pale red pimpernel and handed it up over his head to Leopold. The
youth looked at it for a moment, and burst into tears. The curate
rose hastily.

"It is so heartless of me." said Leopold, "to take pleasure in such
a childish innocence as this!"

"It merely shows," said the curate, laying his hand gently on his
shoulder, "that even in these lowly lovelinesses, there is a
something that has its root deeper than your pain; that, all about
us, in earth and air, wherever eye or ear can reach, there is a
power ever breathing itself forth in signs, now in a daisy, now in a
windwaft, a cloud, a sunset; a power that holds constant and
sweetest relation with the dark and silent world within us; that the
same God who is in us, and upon whose tree we are the buds, if not
yet the flowers, also is all about us--inside, the Spirit; outside,
the Word. And the two are ever trying to meet in us; and when they
meet, then the sign without, and the longing within, become one in
light, and the man no more walketh in darkness, but knoweth whither