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I thought of certain London types, especially among the "criminal classes," and of the old women with withered, simian faces and wearing shawls, slinking in or out of public-houses at the street corners; and also of some people of a better class I had known personally some even in the House of Commons; and I felt that I could not agree with her, much as I wished to do so, without straining my conscience.
Then, with a feeble effort to push her into Reuben's arms, he caught her back, and straining her close to his heart again cried out, "Oh, Joan, but death comes bitter when it means good-bye to such as you!"
He was pressing thereat with hands and feet, and trying to roll the stone upward toward the brow of the hill. But oft as he was about to hurl it over the top, the weight would drive him back, so once again to the plain rolled the stone, the shameless thing. And he once more kept heaving and straining, and the sweat the while was pouring down his limbs, and the dust rose upwards from his head.
Then it seems that, after I was gone, he went on about it to papa, and told him that the mischief had been brewing time out of mind, and some time ago it might have been stopped; but all that straining of my eyes at Eton, last half, had done immense harm, and confirmed the disease; and it is of a kind that that there is no cure for!" He buried his face again. "Did Mr. Lyddell tell you this?"
"Look here, Linn," said his friend, with some affectation of asperity, "you must really calm yourself and be silent, or I shall have to go and sit in the other room. You are straining your throat every time you speak, and exciting yourself as well." "Ah, and it is my last chance!" Lionel said, piteously, and with burning eyes. "If you only knew, Maurice, you would not refuse!"
Harriet's quick eyes, now wide open, caught the significance of the scene. Without an instant's hesitation she sprang toward Janus, fairly hurling herself upon him. One hand grabbed a taut rope that was straining with some heavy weight pulling on it at the other end. Janus sat up as the girl threw her own weight on the line to assist in holding it until the guide should have recovered himself.
"Of the most desirable, that can alone be attained by straining all our energies to their utmost capacity, their utmost efficiency." "Ho capito! accord! now for the explanation. What slumbering qualities in me would you rouse to action?" "Your qualities as a leader of men. The qualities that I lack." "And which in yourself then?" "Those of the thinker. Of the original thinker."
But the silence was unbroken it seemed as though the office must be empty. She pressed her ear to the door, straining for a sound. She knew he never sat long at his work, and it seemed unaccountable that she should not hear him moving about the drawing-board.
And straightway she vanished, and Rhoecus could see nothing but the green glooms beneath the shadowy oak. Not a sound came to his straining ears but the low, trickling rustle of the leaves, and, from far away on the emerald slope, the sweet sound of an idle shepherd's pipe. Filled with wonder and joy Rhoecus turned his steps homeward. The earth seemed to spring beneath him as he walked.
It may well have happened that, in straining to secure for their ideas what they thought their due place, some at least may have forgotten or disparaged that personal and experimental life of the human soul with God which profits by all ordinances but is tied to none, dwelling ever, through all its varying moods, in the inner courts of the sanctuary whereof the walls are not built with hands.
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