He felt calmer. 'Thy will be done' had solaced him. So long as he pleaded his own cause or her cause he was overwhelmed by a sense of his unworthiness. Having confessed his sin and expressed his sorrow, and thrown himself upon the mercy of God, he felt more easy with the words of absolute submission on his lips than with the most passionate entreaty. He rose, went to the window, and looked out. It was now busy morning. Sounds of traffic filled the air. From the window he could see no street, but he could hear the rattle and the din. A vast plain of houses stretched before him. From a thousand chimneys he saw arise a thousand shafts of smoke. The simple people who lived in these modest homes were stirring. The smoke showed breakfast was in course of preparation. These simple people had gone to bed and slept peacefully, had risen and said a few fervent prayers, and were now preparing for the morning meal. Here and there above the houses rose spires and towers of churches in the sober morning light, like sentinels guarding the people from spiritual harm. Happy, busy folk! Happy people who had no leisure for speculations or fears! Happy you who are not open places for the four winds of love to beat into tumult! You cannot sit late reading forbidden words, for you must be up and away to business betimes. The idle man's faith is open to continual assault. The idle man's heart is ever exposed to the arrows of outrageous love. And yet neither his own faith nor his heart had been assailed until now. Did that fact result from the nature of life led by him, or from qualities inherent in himself? Most likely from the kind of life. Happy you busy people down there who have no time for the luxury of such soul-abandoned love! Your dull lives are mere routines of commonplaces. Your love-making is no more exciting than your going to a new school or taking a new house. You settle most of your worldly affairs by the rule of three, and leave your spiritual concerns in the hands of a methodical rector you know to be well-informed and blameless. Who could live among the immutable, the unemotional Chinese? De Quincey says he should go mad in the Flowery Land. He could not endure their immortal traditions, their immemorial customs. After all, perhaps it was better to be more finely strung than these honest dull traders below. The man was a coward who would not risk the higher pain for the higher pleasure. What was the sum of happiness in the life of one dull plodding man of method compared with the rapture which came to him at the touch of Marie's hand?' Ah well, honest folk of method, go your way; I will go mine. If life shall give me nothing else great, it shall give me love. I will fling all other ambitions to the wind now. I will think of nothing else on earth. I shall look for my earthly and heavenly happiness in being with her here all my life, and in death to be with her in the land of the faithful.'