 all my heart!«
    »Yes - you may well say it,« he returned grimly, as they moved onward
together, she with unwilling tread. »But don't mistake me; I beg this because
you may have been led to do so in noticing - if you did notice it - how your
sudden appearance unnerved me down there. It was but a momentary faltering; and
considering what you had been to me, it was natural enough. But will helped me
through it - though perhaps you think me a humbug for saying it - and
immediately afterwards I felt that, of all persons in the world whom it was my
duty and desire to save from the wrath to come - sneer if you like - the woman
whom I had so grievously wronged was that person. I have come with that sole
purpose in view - nothing more.«
    There was the smallest vein of scorn in her words of rejoinder: »Have you
saved yourself? Charity begins at home, they say.«
    »I have done nothing!« said he indifferently. »Heaven, as I have been
telling my hearers, has done all. No amount of contempt that you can pour upon
me. Tess, will equal what I have poured upon myself - the old Adam of my former
years! Well, it is a strange story; believe it or not; but I can tell you the
means by which my conversion was brought about, and I hope you will be
interested enough at least to listen. Have you ever heard the name of the parson
of Emminster - you must have done so? - old Mr. Clare; one of the most earnest
of his school; one of the few intense men left in the Church; not so intense as
the extreme wing of Christian believers with which I have thrown in my lot, but
quite an exception among the Established clergy, the younger of whom are
gradually attenuating the true doctrines by their sophistries, till they are but
the shadow of what they were. I only differ from him on the question of Church
and State - the interpretation of the text, Come out from among them and be ye
separate, saith the Lord - that's all. He is one who, I firmly believe, has been
the humble means of saving more souls in this country than any other man you can
name. You have heard of him?«
    »I have,« she said.
    »He came to Trantridge two or three years ago to preach on behalf of some
missionary society; and I, wretched fellow that I was, insulted him
