“Ah! now,” said Wingfold, “I fear you are thinking a little about your own disgrace and not only of the bad you have done. Why should you not be ashamed? Why would you have the shame taken off you? Nay; you must humbly consent to bear it. Perhaps your shame is the hand of love washing the defilement from off you. Let us keep our shame, and be made clean from the filth!” “I don’t know that I understand you, sir. What do you mean by the defilement? Is it not to have done the deed that is the defilement?” “Is it not rather to have that in you, a part, or all but a part of your being, that makes you capable of doing it? If you had resisted and conquered, you would have been clean from it; and now, if you repent and God comes to you, you will yet be clean. Again I say, let us keep our shame and be made clean! Shame is not defilement, though a mean pride persuades men so. On the contrary, the man who is honestly ashamed has begun to be clean.” “But what good would that do to Emmeline? It cannot bring her up again to the bright world out of the dark grave.” “Emmeline is not in the dark grave.” “Where is she, then?” he said with a ghastly look. “That I cannot tell. I only know that, if there be a God, she is in his hands,” replied the curate. The youth gazed on in his face and made no answer. Wingfold saw that he had been wrong in trying to comfort him with the thought of God dwelling in him. How was such a poor passionate creature to take that for a comfort? How was he to understand or prize the idea, who had his spiritual nature so all undeveloped? He would try another way. “Shall I tell you what seems to me sometimes the only one thing I want to help me out of my difficulties?” “Yes, please, sir,” answered Leopold, as humbly as a child. “I think sometimes, if I could but see Jesus for one moment--” “Ah!” cried Leopold, and gave a great sigh. “YOU would like to see him then, would you?” “Oh, Mr. Wingfold!” “What would you say to him if you saw him?” “I don’t know. I would fall down on my face and hold his feet lest he should go away from me.” “Do you think then he could help you?” “Yes. He could make Emmeline alive again. He could destroy what I have done.” “But still, as you say, the crime would remain.” “But, as you say, he could pardon that, and make me that I would never never sin again.” “So you think the story about Jesus Christ is true?” “Yes. Don’t you?” said Leopold with an amazed, half-frightened look.