The sufferer resembles a child that has not yet been severely tempted. With recovery come stronger claims by the powers of God. But these claims will be resisted by old habits, resuming their force as physical and mental health returns—and then comes the tug of war. For no one can be saved without the will being supreme in the matter, without choosing to resist the wrong and do the right. Wingfold never built much on bed-repentance. The principle of the devil sick and the devil well, is only too true. But he welcomed the fresh opportunity for a beginning. He knew that pain and sickness do clean some dirt from the windows looking toward the infinite, and that the unknown world from which we came does sometimes look in, waking the unconscious memories that lie in every child born into the world. God is the God of patience, and waits and waits for the child who keeps him waiting and will not open the door.

Wingfold went to see Mrs. Wylder, but took care to press nothing upon her. He let her give him the lead. She spoke of her weakness, and the parson drew out her moan. She praised her Barbara, and the parson praised her again in words that opened the mother’s eyes to new beauties in her daughter. She mentioned her weariness, and the parson spoke of the fields and soft wind and the yellow shine of the buttercups in the grass. Her heart was gently drawn to the man whose eyes were so keen, whose voice was so mellow and strong, and whose words were so lovely and sweet, saying the things that were in her own heart but would not come out.

One day he proposed to read something, and she consented. I will not say what he read. But he was successful in interesting Mrs. Wylder, which was no wonder, for she had a strong brain as well as a big heart. More than half her faults came of an indignant sense of wrong. She had passionately loved her husband once, but he had soon ceased even the pretence of returning her affection.

After a fierce struggle against the lessons life would have her taught, a struggle that continued into her fortieth year, she was now at length a pupil in another school, where her bed was the schoolroom, the book of Quiet her first study. Her two attendants were a clergyman and her own daughter, and her one teacher God himself. In that schoolroom the world began to open to her a little. Wingfold had no equal in being able to make another think without seeming to aim at that specifically.