Jack asked him if he thought he was recovering his health. "Oh yes, I grow stronger every day. If you had seen me when I first came out of prison, you would wonder at the change." So he said; but Jack wondered, instead, what he could possibly have looked like then. "No doubt," he said, "while you were in prison, you often wished to die." "I did--_sometimes_," he answered, his eyes kindling--"not that I might be away from my pain, but that I might be with my Saviour. But for the most part, I felt Him so near me there, that I thought death itself could scarcely bring us any closer." Jack's look softened. "In spite of all your suffering, I call you blessed," he said in a low voice. "Still, after all, that was knowing Him by faith. In heaven, it will be sight." "Which will be different, and _must_ be better, though it is hard to see how it can. I thought I knew something before of the mystery of communion with Him, but I felt as if I had never tasted it till then. I did not know there could be such peace, such joy." "Has it stayed with you since you came out?" "No, and yes. When a child is hurt, the mother takes it in her arms and fondles it; when it is well, she lets it run by her side. But she does not love it the less." "Perhaps it seems strange to you now to come back to life? Perhaps you would rather not?" "I would rather die, you think, and go to Him? Not just yet. There are too many in the world that He wants me to help." "Like these poor people here who have suffered so much?" "Yes; but there are those more worthy of our pity than even they." "_More_ worthy? Truly on God's earth it seems to me that there are none. But I know what you mean," Jack added in a lower voice. "You are thinking of those, in harems or elsewhere,--for whom we only dare to ask one thing--_death_" Vahanian's face grew sad. It was some moments before he spoke again. At last he said, "There are those still more pitiable. No man has compassion--no man cares for the soul of--the Turk." Jack started, as if he had been shot. "How _could_ we?" he asked. "Yet you say every day, 'Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.'" "I never thought of it in that way. And I tell you, if I ever get back to England, I will _not_ forgive the Turk! I will _not_ keep silence about his evil deeds, about the things I have seen and heard of here!" "Nor should you. To stop them would be to show the very kindness of God even to the Turk himself. But I would it were God's will to stop them, not with His wrath, but with His love." "How could that be?" "As he stopped St. Paul's. Do you not believe Christ died for the Turk as well as for the Christian?"