Hurt by the selfishness and greed of men, to escape from which we must needs go out of the world, worse hurt by our own indignation at their wrong, and our lack of patience under it, we are his creatures and his care still. The _right_ he claims as his affair, and he will see it done; but the wrong is by us a thousand times well suffered, if it but drive us to him, that we may learn he is indeed our very lover. That was a terrible night for Cosmo--a night billowy with black fire. It reminded him afterwards of nothing so much as that word of the Lord--_the power of darkness_. It was not merely darkness with no light in it, but darkness alive and operative. He had hardly dared suspect the nature, and only now knew the force, and was about to prove the strength of the love with which he loved Joan. Great things may be foreseen, but they cannot be known until they arrive. His illness had been ripening him to this possibility of loss and suffering. His heart was now in blossom: for that some hearts must break;--I may not say in _full_ blossom, for what the full blossom of the human heart is, the holiest saint with the mightiest imagination cannot know--he can but see it shine from afar. It was a severe duty that was now required of him--I do not mean the performance of the final request the doctor had made--that Cosmo had forgotten, neither could have attempted with honesty; for the emotion he could not but betray, would have pleaded for himself, and not for his friend; it was enough that he must yield the lady of his dreams, become the lady as well of his waking and hoping soul. Perhaps she did not love Jermyn--he could not tell; but Jermyn was his friend and had trusted in him, confessing that his soul was bound up in the lady; one of them must go to the torture chamber, and when the _question_ lay between him and another, Cosmo knew for which it must be. He alone was in Cosmo’s hands; his own self was all he held and had power over, all he could offer, could yield. Mr. Simon had taught him that, as a mother gives her children money to give, so God gives his children _selves_, with their wishes and choices, that they may have the true offering to lay upon the true altar; for on that altar nothing else will burn than _selves_.