she had just quitted. She knelt to
pray, but the brilliant vision haunted her still, and ever as the wind
stirred the vines about the window, there came back that alluring
music.

She rose with a pang of self-reproach. Instead of the confidence, the
consciousness of protection, the holy serenity with which she usually
sought her pillow, she experienced an excitement and restlessness
which nothing could allay. She attempted to meditate, but with every
thought of duty came memories of the festal garlands, and the blazing
lamps, and the flitting figures of the merry dancers.

An open Bible lay on the window-seat and as she passed it she read:
"Another parable put he forth unto them, saying: The kingdom of heaven
is likened to a man which sowed good seed in his field. But while he
slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his
way."

Tears sprang to her eyes, and she exclaimed, "In the field of my heart
also hath the enemy sown tares." She took up the book, and read again;
then too soulful to remain quiet, she rapidly paced the chamber.
Resolutely and carefully she reviewed the past, back to her first
faint trembling hope. Rigorously, as in the presence of her Maker, she
scanned her first departure from the narrow path; and if her earlier
convictions were pungent, tenfold more intense was the agony of this
her second awakening.

In the solitude of his chamber, Edward thought with less elation of
his successful plan. He believed that Helen would have yielded to no
ordinary temptation, and felt that he had been scarcely generous to
enlist her affections against her principles. His repeated, "It is but
a trifle," did not satisfy him; and when he had listened hour after
hour to her footfall, he could no longer restrain his inclination to
soothe her emotion. In vain he assayed all the arguments, all the
sophistry, which the world employs to attract the lukewarm professor.

[Illustration: While He Slept His Enemy Came and Sowed Tares Among the
Wheat.]

"Do not seek to console me," said Helen, "for such tears are salutary,
my dear brother. I have virtually said that the joys of religion are
fading and unsatisfactory; I must sometimes seek for others. I have
quieted more than one uneasy conscience, by throwing the influence of
a professing Christian into the scale of the world. I have wandered
from my Father's side to the society of his rebel subjects. And yet I
have cause to mourn less for this one tr