"So much morbid introspection," he went on, "followed by hours of weeping and fasting, if indulged in long enough will certainly have that result. A person who fasts a sufficient length of time invariably parts piecemeal with valuable portions of his wits." She stretched out her hand. He mistook the action and bent down and kissed it. "No," said Priscilla, "I want the milk." He snatched it up and gave it to her, watching her drink with all the relief, the thankfulness of a mother whose child's sickness takes a turn for the better. When she had finished she gave him back the glass. "Fritzi," she said, looking at him with eyes wide open now and dark with anxious questioning, "we won't reproach ourselves then if we can help it--" "Certainly not, ma'am--a most futile thing to do." "I'll try to believe what you say about me, if you promise to believe what I say about you." "Ma'am, I'll believe anything if only you will be reasonable." "You've been everything to me--that's what I want to say. Always, ever since I can remember." "And you, ma'am? What have you not been to me?" "And there's nothing, nothing you can blame yourself for." "Ma'am--" "You've been too good, too unselfish, and I've dragged you down." "Ma'am--" "Well, we won't begin again. But tell me one thing--and tell me the truth--oh Fritzi tell me the truth as you value your soul--do you anywhere see the least light on our future? Do you anywhere see even a bit, a smallest bit of hope?" He took her hand again and kissed it; then lifted his head and looked at her very solemnly. "No, ma'am," he said with the decision of an unshakable conviction, "upon my immortal soul I do not see a shred." XXII Let the reader now picture Priscilla coming downstairs the next morning, a golden Sunday morning full of Sabbath calm, and a Priscilla leaden-eyed and leaden-souled, her shabby garments worn out to a symbol of her worn out zeals, her face the face of one who has forgotten peace, her eyes the eyes of one at strife with the future, of one for ever asking "What next?" and shrinking with a shuddering "Oh please not that," from the bald reply. Out of doors Nature wore her mildest, most beneficent aspect. She very evidently cared nothing for the squalid tragedies of human fate. Her hills were bathed in gentle light. Her sunshine lay warm along the cottage fronts. In the gardens her hopeful bees, cheated into thoughts of summer, droned round the pale mauves and purples of what was left of starworts. The grass in the churchyard sparkled with the fairy film of gossamers. Sparrows chirped. Robins whistled. And humanity gave the last touch to the picture by ringing the church bells melodiously to prayer.