aps it is generally, in troubled health, that such thoughts
come first; but in nature there are facts of color that the cloudy day
reveals. So sure am I that many things which illness has led me to see
are true, that I would endlessly rather never be well than lose sight of
them. "So would any madman say of his fixed idea." I will keep my
madness, then, for therein most do I desire the noble: and to desire
what I desire, if it be but to desire, is better than to have all you
offer us in the name of truth. Through such desire and the hope of its
attainment, all greatest things have been wrought in the earth: I too
have my unbelief as well as you--I can not believe that a lie on the
belief of which has depended our highest development. You may say you
have a higher to bring in. But that higher you have become capable of by
the precedent lie. Yet you vaunt truth! You would sink us low indeed,
making out falsehood our best nourishment--at some period of our
history at least. If, however, what I call true and high, you call false
and low--my assertion that you have never seen that of which I so speak
will not help--then is there nothing left us but to part, each go his
own road, and wait the end--which according to my expectation will show
the truth, according to yours, being nothing, will show nothing.

"I can not help thinking, if we could only get up there," Dorothy went
on,--"I mean into a life of which I can at least dream--if I could but
get my head and heart into the kingdom of Heaven, I should find that
every thing else would come right. I believe it is God Himself I
want--nothing will do but Himself in me. Mr. Wingfold says that we find
things all wrong about us, that they keep going against our will and our
liking, just to drive things right inside us, or at least to drive us
where we can get them put right; and that, as soon as their work is
done, the waves will lie down at our feet, or if not, we shall at least
walk over their crests."

"It sounds very nice, and would comfort any body that wasn't in
trouble," said Juliet; "but you wouldn't care one bit for it all any
more than I do, if you had pain and love like mine pulling at your
heart."

"I have seen a mother make sad faces enough over the baby at her
breast," said Dorothy. "Love and pain seem so strangely one in this
world, the wonder is how they will ever get parted. What God must feel
like, with this world hanging on to Him with all its pains and cries--