As he passed from the narrowest part of the Strand into the space round St. Clement Danes’ church, he was startled, in a momentary lull of the uproar, by the sound of chiming bells. He slackened his pace to listen; but a huge van lumbered by, shaking the houses on both sides, and drowning all sounds but its own rattle; and then he found himself suddenly immersed in a crowd, vociferating and gesticulating round a policeman, who was conveying a woman towards the station-house. He shouldered through it—another lull came, and with it the same slow, gentle, calm cadence of chiming bells. Again and again he caught it as he passed on to Temple Bar; whenever the roar subsided the notes of the old hymn-tune came dropping down on him like balm from the air. If the ancient benefactor who caused the bells of St. Clement Danes’ church to be arranged to play that chime so many times a day is allowed to hover round the steeple at such times, to watch the effect of his benefaction on posterity, he must have been well satisfied on that evening. Tom passed under the Bar, and turned into the Temple another man, softened again, and in his right mind. “There’s always a voice saying the right thing to you somewhere, if you’ll only listen for it,” he thought. CXXXV. “It was because you were out of sorts with the world, smarting with the wrongs you saw on every side, struggling after something better and higher, and siding and sympathizing with the poor and weak, that I loved you. We should never have been here, dear, if you had been a young gentleman satisfied with himself and the world, and likely to get on well in society.” “Ah, Mary, it’s all very well for a man. It’s a man’s business. But why is a woman’s life to be made wretched? Why should you be dragged into all my perplexities, and doubts, and dreams, and struggles?” “And why should I not?” “Life should be all bright and beautiful to a woman. It is every man’s duty to shield her from all that can vex, or pain, or soil.” “But have women different souls from men?” “God forbid!” “Then are we not fit to share your highest hopes?” “To share our highest hopes! Yes, when we have any. But the mire and clay where one sticks fast over and over again, with no high hopes or high anything else in sight—a man must be a selfish brute to bring one he pretends to love into all that.” “Now, Tom,” she said almost solemnly, “you are not true to yourself. Would you, part with your own deepest convictions? Would you if you could, go back to the time when you cared for and thought about none of these things?” “He thought a minute, and then, pressing her hand, said: “No, dearest, I would not. The consciousness of the darkness in one and around one brings the longing for light. And then the light dawns; through mist and fog, perhaps, but enough to pick one’s way by.” He stopped a moment, and then added, “and shines ever brighter unto the-perfect day. Yes, I begin to know it.”