ss of effort, a sense of transformation and
knowledge of the growth of hidden things. The bud bursting into the
glory of the rose, must, if there be feeling in a rose, undergo some
such effort before it can make its beauty known; the butterfly but
newly freed from the dull husk that hid its splendours, at first must
feel the imperfect wings it stretches in the sun to be irksome to its
unaccustomed sense. And so it was with Angela; she spread her half-
grown wings in the sun of her new existence, and found them strange,
not knowing as yet that they were shaped to bear her to the flower-
crowned heights of love.

Hers was one of those rare natures in which the passion that we know
by the generic term of love, approached as near perfection as is
possible in our human hearts. For there are many sorts and divisions
of love, ranging from the affection, pure, steady, and divine, that is
showered upon us from above, to the degrading madness of such a one as
George Caresfoot. It is surely one of the saddest evidences of our
poor humanity that, even among the purest of us, there are none who
can altogether rid the whiteness of the love they have to offer of its
earthly stain. Indeed, if we could so far conquer the promptings of
our nature as to love with perfect purity, we should become like
angels. But, just as white flowers are sometimes to be found on the
blackest peak, so there do bloom in the world spirits as pure as they
are rare--so free from evil, so closely shadowed by the Almighty wing,
that they can almost reach to this perfection. Then the love they have
to give is too refined, too holy and strong, to be understood of the
mass of men: often it is squandered on some unequal and unanswering
nature; sometimes it is wisely offered up to Him from whom it came.

We gaze upon an ice-bound river, and there is nothing to tell us that
beneath that white cloak its current rushes to the ocean. But
presently the spring comes, the prisoned waters burst their fetters,
and we see a glad torrent sparkling in the sunlight. And so it was
with our heroine's heart; the breath of Arthur's passion and the light
of Arthur's eyes had beat upon it, and almost freed the river of its
love. Already the listener might hear the ice-sheets crack and start;
soon they will be gone, and her deep devotion will set as strong
towards him as the tide of the torrent towards its receiving sea.

"Fine writing!" perhaps the reader will say; but surely none t