“Yes, indeed I do.--Then do you remember what he said to his disciples as he left them: ‘I AM WITH YOU ALWAYS UNTO THE END OF THE WORLD’?--If that be true, then he can hear you just as well now as ever he could. And when he was in the world, he said, ‘COME UNTO ME ALL YE THAT LABOUR AND ARE HEAVY-LADEN, AND I WILL GIVE YOU REST.’ It is rest you want, my poor boy--not deliverance from danger or shame, but rest--such peace of mind as you had when you were a child. If he cannot give you that, I know not where or how it is to be had. Do not waste time in asking yourself how he can do it: that is for him to understand, not you--until it is done. Ask him to forgive you and make you clean and set things right for you. If he will not do it, then he is not the saviour of men, and was wrongly named Jesus.” The curate rose. Leopold had hid his face. When he looked again he was gone. CHAPTER XXVI. SLEEP. As Wingfold came out of the room, which was near the stair, Helen rose from the top of it, where she had been sitting all the time he had been with her brother. He closed the door gently behind him, and stepped softly along the landing. A human soul in guilt and agony is an awful presence, but there was more than that in the hush of the curate: he felt as if he had left the physician of souls behind him at the bedside; that a human being lay on the rack of the truth, but at his head stood one who watched his throes with the throbs of such a human heart as never beat in any bosom but his own, and the executioners were angels of light. No wonder if with such a feeling in his breast Wingfold walked softly, and his face glistened! He was not aware that the tears stood in his eyes, but Helen saw them. “You know all!” she faltered. “I do. Will you let me out by the garden again? I wish to be alone.” She led the way down the stair, and walked with him through the garden. Wingfold did not speak. “You don’t think very badly of my poor brother, do you, Mr. Wingfold?” said Helen, meekly. “It is a terrible fate,” he returned. “I think I never saw a lovelier disposition. I do hope his mind will soon be more composed. I think he knows where alone he can find rest. I am well aware how foolish that of which I speak seems to some minds, Miss Lingard; but when a man is once overwhelmed in his own deeds, when they have turned into spectres to mock at him, when he loathes himself and turns with sickness from past, present, and future, I know but one choice left, and that is between the death your friend Mr. Bascombe preaches, and the life preached by Jesus, the crucified Jew. Into the life I hope your brother will enter.” “I am so glad you don’t hate him.” “Hate him! Who but a demon could hate him?” Helen lifted a grateful look from eyes that swam in tears. The terror of his possible counsel for the moment vanished. He could never tell him to give himself up!