THREE:She did not wait to put on a shawl, but walked quickly across the drawing-room, where she had so often heard his nimble tripping approach, and across the inner hall and out into that Gothic apartment where she would surely find him. Before she got there she had only one desire left, to abase herself and be raised up again. She was short-sighted, and as she came into the outer hall, her heart for a moment leaped within her, for she thought she saw him standing in the dusky corner by the library door. Then, with a sickening reaction, she saw the phantom resolve itself into a coat and hat of her fathers hanging up{215} there, and she saw that the hall was empty, and Mr Silverdale gone. Still she would not give up; he might be standing just outside, unable quite to leave her like this, and opening the front door, she looked out on to the star-sown dusk. But certainly there was no one there.So let us give, he said, just as if he was perorating in the pulpit, let us give till we have spent{207} all our energies. That will take a long time, wont it: for the act of giving seems but to increase your capability of it. Dear Miss Alice, I have a thousand plans that are yet unrealised, a thousand schemes for this little parish of ours. We must have more schools for religious education, more classes, more lives unselfishly lived. I want all the help I can get. I want to transfuse St Thomass with the certainty that the doubting disciple lacked. But I cant do it alone. Those who see must lend me their eyesI am a mere stupid man. I
A human being is a part of a whole, called by the magic and know universe.