There are those who will be incredulous and even resentful in view of this picture, but it will not be the first time that facts have been quarrelled with. It is _true_ that many are writhing and groaning in this cruel bondage, mastered and held captive by some debasing appetite or passion, perhaps by many. Sometimes, with a bitter, despairing sorrow, of which superficial observers of life can have no idea, they speak of these horrid chains; sometimes they tug at them almost frantically. A few escape, but more are dragged down and away--away from honorable companionships and friendships; away from places of trust, from walks of usefulness and safety; away from parents, from wife and children, until the awful isolation is complete, and the guilty soul finds itself alone with the sin that mastered it, conscious that God only will ever see and remember. Human friends will forget--they must forget in order to obtain relief from an object that has become morally too unsightly to be looked upon; and in mercy they are so created that they can forget, though it may be long before it is possible. There are people who scout this awful mystery of evil. They have beautiful little theories of their own, which they have spun in the seclusion of their studies. They keep carefully within their shady, flower-bordered walks, and ignore the existence of the world's dusty highways, in which so many are fainting and being trampled upon. What they do not see does not exist. What they do not believe is not true. They cannot condemn too severely the lack of artistic taste and liberal culture which leads any one to regard sin as other than a theologian's phrase or a piquant element in human life, which otherwise would be rather dull and flavorless. Mrs. Arnot was not a theorist, nor was she the elegant lady, wholly given to the aesthetic culture that her husband desired; she was a large-hearted woman, and she understood human life and its emergencies sufficiently well to tremble with apprehension when she saw the face of Egbert Haldane, for she felt that a deathless soul in its crisis--its deepest spiritual need--was looking to her solely for help. CHAPTER XXX IDEAL KNIGHTHOOD Mrs. Arnot again came directly to the youth and put her hand on his shoulder with motherly freedom and kindliness. Beyond even the word of sympathy is the touch of sympathy, and it often conveys to the fainting heart a subtle power to hope and trust again which the materialist cannot explain. The Divine Physician often touched those whom he healed. He laid his hand fearlessly on the leper from whom all shrank with inexpressible dread. The moral leper who trembled under Mrs. Arnot's hand felt that he was not utterly lost and beyond the pale of hope, if one so good and pure could still touch him; and there came a hope, like a ray struggling through thick darkness, that the hand that caressed might rescue him. "Egbert," said the lady gravely, "tell me what I can do for you."