But from the womb of this grim truth is born a noble consolation. Were hell mere torment, and joy in heaven only, where were the good man's merit? Only when the choice lies between two heavens--the selfish and the unselfish--is the battle worthy the fighting! No human soul dies from earth that attains not heaven,--that heaven which the heart chiefly sought while in this world; and herefrom is the genesis of virtue. Sin brings its self-inflicted penalties there as here; but hell is still the happiness of man, heaven of God!
Reaching the house, Manetho passed through the open door, crossed the hall with his customary noiselessness, and entered the conservatory. Despite the darkness, he was at once aware of the motionless group beneath the palm-trees. A stranger in the house was something so unprecedented that he could not repress a throb of alarm. Nurse looked up and beckoned him. Drawing near, he heard the long, deep breathing of the sleeper. With a sudden fore-glimpse of the truth, he knelt down, and bent over the upturned countenance.
Though the beard was close-shaven and the hair cropped short, there could be no doubt about the face. His guest had come before him, and was lying defenceless at his feet; but Manetho harbored no thought of violence. He pressed his slender hands together with an impulse of sympathy. "Poor fellow!" he whispered, "how he has suffered! How the horror of blood-guiltiness must have tortured him! The noble Helwyse hair,--all gone! Too dear a price to pay for the mere sacrifice of a human life! And pain and all might have been spared him,--poor fellow! poor fellow!" Manetho lacked but little of shedding true tears over the evidence of his dearest foe's useless dread and anguish. Did he wish Balder to bring undulled nerves to his own torture-chamber?
His lament over, Manetho turned to Nurse for such information regarding the guest's arrival and behavior as she might have to communicate. Of his own affair with Balder he made no mention. The conversation was carried on by signs, according to a code long since grown up between the two. When the tale was told, Nurse was despatched to make ready Helen's room for the new-comer, and thither did the two laboriously bear him, and laid him, still sleeping, on his mother's bed.