e; let it not be too much for her.
What good it shall work in her, Thou, Lord, needest not that we should
instruct Thee." Therewith he rose, and left the room.

For some weeks after, she was jealous of latent design to bring their
religion to bear upon her; but perceiving not a single direct approach,
not the most covert hint of attack, she became gradually convinced that
they had no such intent. Polwarth was an absolute serpent of holy
wisdom, and knew that upon certain conditions of the human being the
only powerful influences of religion are the all but insensible ones. A
man's religion, he said, ought never to be held too near his neighbor.
It was like violets: hidden in the banks, they fill the air with their
scent; but if a bunch of them is held to the nose, they stop away their
own sweetness.

Not unfrequently she heard one of them reading to the other, and by and
by, came to join them occasionally. Sometimes it would be a passage of
the New Testament, sometimes of Shakespeare, or of this or that old
English book, of which, in her so-called education, Juliet had never
even heard, but of which the gatekeeper knew every landmark. He would
often stop the reading to talk, explaining and illustrating what the
writer meant, in a way that filled Juliet with wonder. "Strange!" she
would say to herself; "I never thought of that!" She did not suspect
that it would have been strange indeed if she had thought of it.

In her soul began to spring a respect for her host and hostess, such as
she had never felt toward God or man. When, despite of many revulsions
it was a little established, it naturally went beyond them in the
direction of that which they revered. The momentary hush that preceded
the name of our Lord, and the smile that so often came with it; the
halo, as it were, which in their feeling surrounded Him; the confidence
of closest understanding, the radiant humility with which they
approached His idea; the way in which they brought the commonest
question side by side with the ideal of Him in their minds, considering
the one in the light of the other, and answering it thereby; the way in
which they took all He said and did on the fundamental understanding
that His relation to God was perfect, but His relation to men as yet an
imperfect, endeavoring relation, because of their distance from His
Father; these, with many another outcome of their genuine belief, began
at length to make her feel, not merely as if there h