"Why hesitate?" he said. "Your choice is very simple. You choose the direct power of God to make Sandie well, or you reject it. Don't think for a moment it is I who make him well. I can do no more than the doctor. Look on me only as the window through which the sun shines. So choose, Lady Maud."
"Please go to him," she said; "and oh, be quick!"
The human cry sounded there. She was terrified at her choice. What if Sandie died, and she had not sent for the doctor, not done all that could have been done? Yet she did not revoke her decision. But she was frightened, and this stranger whom she had seen yesterday for the first time soothed her like a child.
"There is nothing to be frightened at," he said. "You have chosen right, and your faith knows that, but the flesh is weak. Or, rather, our faith is weak, while our flesh is strong. It binds and controls us sometimes, so that our true will is almost powerless. Let me be silent a minute."
He moved his chair round again to the table where they had dined, made a backward sweep of his hand, overturning and breaking a glass, so as to clear a little space, and leaned his head on his hands, clasping his fingers over his eyes to shut out the sight of all material things, and brought his whole mind home to the one great fact from which sprang his own life, his health, his happiness--namely, his belief in the presence, omnipotence, and love of God. From fishing, from all the preoccupations of life, from Thurso, from Maud, from false beliefs in illness and pain, he called his winged thoughts home, and they settled in his soul like homing doves. With all his power of soul and mind he had to realise the central fact, this root from which the whole world sprang. Every nerve and fibre, material though they were, had to be instinct with it. As he had said to Maud, he was but the window through which the sun shone. This window, then, had to be polished and cleaned, to be made speckless of dust, or of anything which could cast a shadow and hinder the rays from penetrating. For a minute or two he remained motionless, and then got up from his chair.
"Come up with me, Lady Maud," he said, "since you have asked this in sincerity. I should like you to see it, since you are ready to believe, for, like the Israelites, you shall stand still and see the salvation of God."