Read "What's Mine's Mine. Volume I" by George MacDonald online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
When Ian ceased, a silence deep as the darkness around, fell upon them. To Ian, the silence seemed the very voice of God, clear in the darkness; to the mother it was a darkness interpenetrating the darkness; it was a great gulf between her and her boy. She must cry to him aloud, but what should she cry? If she did not, an opportunity, perhaps the last, on which hung eternal issues, would be gone for ever! Each moment's delay was a disobedience to her conscience, a yielding to love's sinful reluctance! With "sick assay" she heaved at the weight on her heart, but not a word would come. If Ian would but speak again, and break the spell of the terrible stillness! She must die in eternal wrong if she did not speak! But no word would come. Something in her would not move. It was not in her brain or her lips or her tongue, for she knew all the time she could speak if she would. The caitiff will was not all on the side of duty! She was not FOR the truth! -- could she then be OF the truth? She did not suspect a divine reluctance to urge that which was not good.
Not always when the will works may we lay hold of it in the act: somehow, she knew not how, she heard herself speaking.