if he did, and there is no help. Oh, how
horrid I look to him! I _can't_ bear it. I fancied it was all gone; but
there it is, and there it must be forever. I don't care about a God. If
there were a God, what would He be to me without my Paul?"

"I think, Juliet, you will yet come to say, 'What would my Paul be to me
without my God?' I suspect we have no more idea than that lonely fly on
the window there, what it would be _to have a God_."

"I don't care. I would rather go to hell with my Paul than go to Heaven
without him," moaned Juliet.

"But what if God should be the only where to find your Paul?" said
Dorothy. "What if the gulf that parts you is just the gulf of a God not
believed in--a universe which neither of you can cross to meet the
other--just because you do not believe it is there at all?"

Juliet made no answer--Dorothy could not tell whether from feeling or
from indifference. The fact was, the words conveyed no more meaning to
Juliet than they will to some of my readers. Why do I write them then?
Because there are some who will understand them at once, and others who
will grow to understand them. Dorothy was astonished to find herself
saying them. The demands of her new office of comforter gave shape to
many half-formed thoughts, substance to many shadowy perceptions,
something like music to not a few dim feelings moving within her; but
what she said hardly seemed her own at all.

Had it not been for Wingfold's help, Dorothy might not have learned
these things in this world; but had it not been for Juliet, they would
have taken years more to blossom in her being, and so become her own.
Her faint hope seemed now to break forth suddenly into power. Whether or
not she was saying such things as were within the scope of Juliet's
apprehension, was a matter of comparatively little moment. As she lay
there in misery, rocking herself from side to side on the floor, she
would have taken hold of nothing. But love is the first comforter, and
where love and truth speak, the love will be felt where the truth is
never perceived. Love indeed is the highest in all truth; and the
pressure of a hand, a kiss, the caress of a child, will do more to save
sometimes than the wisest argument, even rightly understood. Love alone
is wisdom, love alone is power; and where love seems to fail it is where
self has stepped between and dulled the potency of its rays.

Dorothy thought of another line of expostulation.

"Juliet," she