“I am a poor example for a preacher,” said he. “I was spared, it is true; but for what? For what? I am spared to come back to my home to find that it is desolate. Is that your idea of mercy? I tell you that in all that I have passed through, in my hour of deepest misery, in all those terrible days spent in the loneliness of the forest, I never felt so miserable, so lonely, as I did in that house last night. Mercy? It would have been more merciful to me to have let the cobra and the vulture have their way with me; I should have been spared the supreme misery of my life.” “How you loved him!” she said, after a little pause. “Loved him! Loved him!” he repeated, as if the words made him impatient with their inadequacy. “And the way we used to talk about what would happen when I returned!” “Ah! what would happen--yes. I do believe that we also talked about it together.” “And here I returned to find all changed.” “All changed? All? You take it for granted that all has changed? that nothing is as you left it? that no one--no feeling remains unchanged?” She was looking up at him as he stood gazing out of the window. “Everything has changed for me. I don't know why I came back. I tell you, Agnes, the very sight of the things that were familiar to me long ago only increases my sense of loss--my feeling that nothing here can ever be the same to me.” “What! that nothing--nothing--can ever be the same to you?” “That is what I feel.” “You do not think it possible that it is you and you only who have changed?” “What? Is it possible that you do not see that it is because my affection has not changed through all these years I am miserable to-day!” “Your affection?” “Is it possible that you know me so imperfectly as to fancy that my affection for my brother would decrease during the years of our separation? Ah, I thought you would take it for granted that I was differently constituted. I fancied that you would understand what my affection meant.” “And have you found that I did you wrong?” “You wrong me if you suggest--I do not say that you did actually go so far--that my affection for my brother could ever change.” “I do not suggest that your affection--your affection for your brother--has changed. Oh, believe me, you have all my sympathy. I have felt times without number, after it was known that you were alive, that your home-coming would be cruel. I knew what a blow it would be to you to receive the news of poor Dick. I hoped that my sympathy--Ah, you must be assured that I feel for your suffering, with all my heart.”