(and what sufferings were ever like to His?) could have foreseen that the cruel Cross whereon He hung should hereafter be the finger-post to point the way to heaven? or that beneath His cry of agony in the garden, God heard the triumph-song of a ransomed world?" [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER XIV. _HOPE._ At last there came a time, even in hell, when the burden of my sin lay so heavily upon me, that I felt I could bear it no longer, and that if succour there came none, the very soul of me must wither away and die. It was not that I wanted to evade the punishment of my crime, for I was willing and wished to undergo it to the uttermost. No, that which was so terrible to me was the thought that not all the sufferings of eternity could avail to wipe away the awful stain upon my spirit, or to undo the evil which I had brought upon the woman I had ruined. Of myself and of my future, save for the continual crying-out of my soul after its lost purity, I scarcely cared now to think. It was of Dorothy that my heart was full; it was for Dorothy that I never ceased to sorrow, to lament, and--sinner, though I was--to pray. I saw then the inevitable consequences of the wrong I had done her pictured forth in all their horror. I saw her, with the sense of her sin as yet but fresh upon her, shrinking from every glance, and fancying that she read the knowledge of her guilt in every eye. I saw her, "not knowing where to turn for refuge from swiftly-advancing shame, and understanding no more of this life of ours than a foolish lost lamb wandering farther and farther in the nightfall," stealing stealthily forth at dusk to hide herself from her fellow-creatures. I saw her, when the secret of her shame could no longer be concealed, recoiling in mute terror from the glance of coarse admiration on the faces of sensual men, or shrinking in quivering agony from the look of curious scorn in the eyes of maids and mothers, who drew aside their skirts as she passed them, as if fearful of being contaminated by her touch. And then--driven out from their midst by the very Christian women who should have been the first to have held out a hand to save her--I saw her turn away with a heart hardened into brazen indifference, and plunge headlong into a bottomless gulf of ignominy and sin. Nor did the vision pass from me until, out of that seething vortex of lust and infamy, I saw arise the black phantom of an immortal soul which was lost for ever, crying out unto God and His Christ for judgment upon the seducer! * * * * *