"Understand me, Rotha," he said, catching the look. "I am talking of the dissatisfaction of a person who is doing his best. The fact that one is dissatisfied when not doing his best, proves simply that feeling is not dead yet. There is no comfort to be drawn from that." Rotha went on drawing and did not look up, this time. Mr. Digby considered how he should say what he wanted to say. "Rotha--" he began, "how is it with that question you were once concerned about? Are you any nearer being a Christian?" "I don't know, sir. I do not think I am." "What hinders?" "I suppose," said Rotha, playing with her pencil absently,--"the old hindrance." "You do not wish to be a Christian." "Yes, sometimes I do. Sometimes I do. But I--cannot." "I should feel happier about you, if that question were well settled." "Why, Mr. Digby?" said Rotha, answering rather something in his tone than in his words, and looking up to get the reply. "Because, Rotha, you take hold hard, where you take hold at all; and you may take hold of something that will fail you." Her eyes, and even a sudden change of colour, put a startled question to him. He smiled as he answered, though again with a reminder of pain which he did not stop to analyse. "No," he said, "I will never fail you, Rotha; never voluntarily; but I have no command over my own life. I would like you to have a trust that could never disappoint you; and there is only One on whom such a trust can be lodged. He who is resting on Christ, is resting on a rock." "I know, Mr. Digby," said Rotha, in a subdued way. "I wish I was on such a rock, too; but that don't change anything." "Do you think you really wish to be a Christian, Rotha?" "Because mother was,--and because you are," she said gravely; "but then, _for myself_, I do not want it." "What is likely to be the end?" "_That_ don't change anything, either," said Rotha, not too lucidly. "Most true!" said Mr. Digby. "Well, Rotha, I will tell you what I think. I think you are your mother's child, and that you will not be left to your own wilfulness. I am afraid, though, that you may have to go through a bitter experience before the wilfulness is broken; and I want to give you one or two things to remember when it comes." "But why should it come?" said Rotha. "Because I am afraid nothing else will bring you to seek the one Friend that cannot be lost; and I think you are bound to find Him." "But where will you be, Mr. Digby?" said Rotha, now plainly much disturbed. "I do not know. I do not know anything about it." "But I could not be so forlorn, if I had you." "Then perhaps you will not have me." At this, however, there came such flashes of changing feeling, of which every change was a variety of pain, in the girl's face, that Mr. Digby's heart was melted. He stretched out his hand and took hers, which lay limp and unresponsive in his grasp, while distressed and startled eyes were fixed upon him.