The gray light of dawn was just spreading across the lake, but the girl noticed only one thing, her husband’s swiftly moving figure.  She rushed to him, and as he heard her, he turned and stared at her an instant as if dazed, and then staggered with a cry into her arms.  “David, David!” she exclaimed, “what is the matter?” Then as she clasped him to her she found that his body was trembling convulsively, and that his hand as she took it was hot like fire; she called to him again in yet greater anxiety:  “David, David!  What is it?  You will kill me if you treat me so!”

He answered her weakly, “Nothing, dear, nothing,” and she caught him to her, and turned and half carried him into the house.  She staggered into a chair with him, and then sat gazing in terror at his countenance.  For the man’s forehead was burning and moist, and his frame was shaking and broken; he was completely prostrated by the fearful agitation that had possessed him.  Helen cried to him once more, but he could only pant, “Wait, wait,” and sink back and let his head fall upon her arm; he lay with his eyes closed, breathing swiftly, and shuddering now and then.  “It was God!” he panted with a sudden start, his voice choking; “He has shown me His face!  He has set me free!”

Then again for a long time he lay with heaving bosom, Helen whispering to him pleadingly, “David, David!” As he opened his eyes, the girl saw a wonderful look upon his face; and at last he began speaking, in a low, shaking voice, and pausing often to catch his breath:  “Oh, Helen,” he said, “it is all gone, but I won, and my life’s prayer has not been for nothing!  I was never so lost, so beaten; but all the time there was a voice in my soul that cried to me to fight,—­that there was glory enough in God’s home for even me!  And oh, to-night it came—­it came!”

David sank back, and there was a long silence before he went on:  “It was wonderful, Helen,” he whispered, “there has come nothing like it to me in all my life; for I had never drunk such sorrow before, never known such fearful need.  It seems as if all the pent-up forces of my nature broke loose in one wild, fearful surge, as if there was a force behind me like a mighty, driving storm, that swept me on and away, beyond self and beyond time, and out into the life of things.  It was like the surging of fierce music, it was the great ocean of the infinite bursting its way into my heart.  And it bore me on, so that I was mad with it, so that I knew not where I was, only that I was panting for breath, and that I could bear it no more and cried out in pain!”

David as he spoke had been lifting himself, the memory of his vision taking hold of him once more; but then he sank down again and whispered, “Oh, I have no more strength, I can do no more; but it was God, and I am free!”