But in the long, quiet hours that followed her departure his thoughts were busy. However much he might think that others were the cause of his unhappy plight, he had seen that he was far more to blame. It had been made still more clear that, even if he could shift this blame somewhat, he could not the consequences. Mrs. Arnot's words had given him a glimpse of light, and had revealed a path, which, though still vague and uncertain, promised to lead out of the present labyrinth of evil. During the morning hours he had dared to hope, and even to pray, that he might find a way of escape from his miserable self and the wretched condition to which it had brought him. For a long time he turned the leaves of Mrs. Arnot's Bible, and here and there a text would flash out like a light upon the clouded future, but as a general thing the words had little meaning. To his ardent and somewhat imaginative nature she had presented the struggle toward a better life in the most attractive light. He was not asked to do something which was vague and mystical; he was not exhorted to emotions and beliefs of which he was then incapable, nor to forms and ceremonies that were meaningless to him, nor to professions equally hollow. On the contrary, the evils, the defects of his own nature, were given an objective form, and he could almost see himself, like a knight, with lance in rest, preparing to run a tilt against the personal faults which had done him such injury. The deeper philosophy, that his heart was the rank soil from which sprang these faults, like Cadmus' armed men, would come with fuller experience. But in a measure he had understood and had been inspired by Mrs. Arnot's thought. Although from a weak mother's indulgence and his own, from wasted years and bad companionships, his life was wellnigh spoiled, he still had sufficient mind to see that to fight down the clamorous passions of his heart into subjection would be a grand and heroic thing. If from the yielding mire of his present self a noble and granite-like character could be built up, so strongly and on such a sure foundation that it would stand the shocks of time and eternity, it were worth every effort of which human nature is capable. Until Mrs. Arnot had spoken her wise and kind, yet honest words, he had felt himself unable to stand erect, much less to enter on a struggle which would tax the strongest. But suppose God would deign to help, suppose it was the divine purpose and practice to supplement the feeble efforts of those who, like himself, sought to ally their weakness to his strength, might not the Creator and the creature, the Father and the child, unitedly achieve what it were hopeless to attempt unaided?