everything."
"You are happy" – said Eleanor.
"Why are not you?"
"I can't help it," said the girl, lifting up her head, though she did not let her eyes go out of the window. "I cannot bear to see the lightning. It is foolish, but I cannot help it."
"Are you sure it is foolish? Is there not some reason at the bottom of it?"
"I think there is a reason, though still it is foolish. There was a man killed by lightning just by our door, once – when I was a child. I saw him – I never can forget it, never!"
And a sort of shudder ran over Eleanor's shoulders as she spoke.
"You want my armour," said her companion. The tone of voice was not only grave but sympathising. Eleanor looked up at him.
"Your armour?"
"You charged me with wearing armour – and I confessed it," he said with something of a smile. "It is a sort of armour that makes people safe in all circumstances."
He looked so quiet, so grave, so cool, and his eye had such a light in it, that Eleanor could not throw off his words. He looked like a man in armour. But no mail of brass was to be seen.
"What do you mean?" she said.
"Did you never hear of the helmet of salvation?"
"I don't know," said Eleanor wonderingly. "I think I have heard the words. I do not think I ever attached any meaning to them."
"Did you never feel," he said, speaking with a peculiar deliberation of manner, "that you were exposed to danger – and to death – from which no effort of yours could free you; and that after death, there is a great white throne to meet, for which you are not ready?"
While he spoke slowly, his eyes were fixed upon Eleanor with a clear piercing glance which she felt read her through and through; but she was fascinated instead of angered, and submitted her own eyes to the reading without wishing to turn them away. Carrying on two trains of thought at the same time, as the mind will, her inward reflection was, "I had no idea that you were so good-looking!" – the answer in words was a sober, "I have felt so."
"Was the feeling a happy one?"
Eleanor's lip suddenly trembled; then she put down that involuntary natural answer, and said evasively, looking out of the window, "I suppose everybody has such feelings sometimes."
"Not with that helmet on" – said her companion.
With all the quietness of his speech, and it was very unimpassioned, his accent had a clear ring to it, which came from some unsounded spirit-depth of power; and Eleanor's heart for a moment sunk before it in a secret convulsion of pain. She concealed this feeling, as she thought, successfully; but that single ray of light had shewed her the darkness; it was keen as an arrow, and the arrow rankled. And her neighbour's next words made her feel that her heart lay bare; so quietly they touched it.
"You feel that you want something, Miss Powle."
Eleanor's head drooped, as well as her heart. She wondered at herself; but there was a spell of power upon her, and she could by no means lift up either. It was not only that his words were true, but that he knew them to be so.
"Do you know what you want?" her friend went on, in tons that were tender, along with that deliberate utterance that carried so much force with it. "You know yourself an offender before the Lord – and you want the sense of forgiveness in your heart. You know yourself inclined to be an offender again – and you want the renewing grace of God to make your heart clean, and set it free from the power of sin. Then you want also something to make you happy; and the love of Jesus alone can do that."
"What is the use of telling over the things one has not got?" – said Eleanor in somewhat smothered tones. The words of her companion came again clear as a bell —
"Because you may have them if you want them."
Eleanor struggled with herself, for her self-possession was endangered, and she was angry at herself for being such a fool; but she could not help it; yet she would not let her agitation come any more to the surface. She waited for clearness of voice, and then could not forbear the question, "How, Mr. Rhys?"
"Jesus said, 'If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.' There is all fulness in him. Go to him for light – go to him for strength – go to him for forgiveness, for healing, for sanctification. 'Whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely.'"
"'Go to him?'" repeated Eleanor vaguely.
"Ask him."
Ask Him! It was such a far-off, strange idea to her a heart, there seemed such a universe of distance between, Eleanor's face grew visibly shadowed with the thought. She? She could not. She did not know how. She was silent a little while. The subject was getting unmanageable.
"I never had anybody talk to me so before, Mr. Rhys," she said, thinking to let it pass.
"Perhaps you never will again," he said. "Hear it now. The Lord Jesus is not far off – as you think – he is very near; he can hear the faintest whisper of a petition that you send to him. It is his message I bring you to-day – a message to you. I am his servant, and he has given me this charge for you to-day – to tell you that he loves you – that he has given his life for yours – and that he calls Eleanor Powle to give him her heart, and then to give him her life, in all the obedience his service may require."
Eleanor felt her heart strangely bowed, subdued, bent to his words. "I will" – was the secret language of her thoughts – "but I must not let this man see all I am feeling, if I can help it." She held herself still, looking out of the window, where the rain fell in torrents yet, though the thunder and the lightning were no longer near. So did he; he added no more to his last words, and a silence lasted in the old ruined window as if its chance occupants were gone again. As the silence lasted, Eleanor felt it grow awkward. She was at a loss how to break it. It was broken for her then.
"What will you do, Miss Powle?"
"I will think about it" – she answered, startled and hesitating.
"How long, before you decide?"
"How can I tell?" she said.
"You are shrinking from a decision already formed. The answer is given in your secret thoughts, and something is rising up in the midst of them to thwart it. Shall I tell my Master that his message is refused?"
"Mr. Rhys!" said Eleanor looking up, "I never heard any one talk so in all my life! You speak as if – "
"As if, what?"
"You speak as if – I never heard any one speak as you do."
"I speak as if I were in the habit of telling my Master how his message is received? I often do that."
"But it seems superfluous to tell what is known already," said Eleanor, wondering secretly much more than she dared to say at her companion's talk.
"Do you never, in speaking to those you love, tell them what is no information?"
Eleanor was now dumb. There was too great a gulf of difference between her companion and herself, to try to frame any words or thoughts that might bridge it over. She must remain on one side and he on the other;
