 whatever blemishes others might discern in William, to
his friend's mind he was faultless; for Marner had one of those impressible
self-doubting natures which, at an inexperienced age, admire imperativeness and
lean on contradiction. The expression of trusting simplicity in Marner's face,
heightened by that absence of special observation, that defenceless, deer-like
gaze which belongs to large prominent eyes, was strongly contrasted by the
self-complacent suppression of inward triumph that lurked in the narrow slanting
eyes and compressed lips of William Dane. One of the most frequent topics of
conversation between the two friends was Assurance of salvation: Silas confessed
that he could never arrive at anything higher than hope mingled with fear, and
listened with longing wonder when William declared that he had possessed
unshaken assurance ever since, in the period of his conversion, he had dreamed
that he saw the words »calling and election sure« standing by themselves on a
white page in the open Bible. Such colloquies have occupied many a pair of
pale-faced weavers, whose unnurtured souls have been like young winged things,
fluttering forsaken in the twilight.
    It had seemed to the unsuspecting Silas that the friendship had suffered no
chill even from his formation of another attachment of a closer kind. For some
months he had been engaged to a young servant-woman, waiting only for a little
increase to their mutual savings in order to their marriage; and it was a great
delight to him that Sarah did not object to William's occasional presence in
their Sunday interviews. It was at this point in their history that Silas's
cataleptic fit occurred during the prayer-meeting; and amidst the various
queries and expressions of interest addressed to him by his fellow-members,
William's suggestion alone jarred with the general sympathy towards a brother
thus singled out for special dealings. He observed that, to him, this trance
looked more like a visitation of Satan than a proof of divine favour, and
exhorted his friend to see that he hid no accursed thing within his soul. Silas,
feeling bound to accept rebuke and admonition as a brotherly office, felt no
resentment, but only pain, at his friend's doubts concerning him; and to this
was soon added some anxiety at the perception that Sarah's manner towards him
began to exhibit a strange fluctuation between an effort at an increased
manifestation of regard and involuntary signs of shrinking and dislike. He asked
her if she wished to break off their engagement; but she denied this: their
engagement was known to the church, and had been recognised in the
prayer-meetings; it
