Mrs. Arnot again came directly to the youth and put her hand on his shoulder with motherly freedom and kindliness. Beyond even the word of sympathy is the touch of sympathy, and it often conveys to the fainting heart a subtle power to hope and trust again which the materialist cannot explain. The Divine Physician often touched those whom he healed. He laid his hand fearlessly on the leper from whom all shrank with inexpressible dread. The moral leper who trembled under Mrs. Arnot's hand felt that he was not utterly lost and beyond the pale of hope, if one so good and pure could still touch him; and there came a hope, like a ray struggling through thick darkness, that the hand that caressed might rescue him.
"Egbert," said the lady gravely, "tell me what I can do for you."
"I cannot face the consequences," he replied in a low, shuddering tone.
"And do you only dread the consequences?" Mrs. Arnot asked sadly. "Do you not think of the evil which is the cause of your trouble?"
"I can scarcely separate the sin from the suffering. My mind is confused, and I am overwhelmed with fear and loneliness. All who are good and all that is good seemed to be slipping from me, and I should soon be left only to my miserable self. O, Mrs. Arnot, no doubt I seem to you like a weak, guilty coward. I seem so to myself. If it were danger or difficulty I had to face I would not fear; but this slow, inevitable, increasing pressure of a horrible fate, this seeing clearly that evil cuts me off from hope and all happiness, and yet to feel that I cannot escape from it--that I am too weak to break my chains--it is more than I can endure. I fear that I should have gone mad if you had not come. Do you think there is any chance for me? I feel as if I had lost my manhood."
Mrs. Arnot took the chair which the sheriff had brought on her entrance, and said quietly, "Perhaps you have, Egbert; many a man has lost what you mean by that term."
"You speak of it with a composure that I can scarcely understand," said Haldane, with a quick glance of inquiry. "It seems to me an irreparable loss."
"It does not seem so great a loss to me," replied Mrs. Arnot gently. "As your physician you must let me speak plainly again. It seems to me that what you term your manhood was composed largely of pride, conceit, ignorance of yourself, and inexperience of the world. You were liable to lose it at any time, just as you did, partly through your own folly and partly through the wrong of others. You know, Egbert, that I have always been interested in young men, and what many of them regard as their manhood is not of much value to themselves or any one else."