ne pure flame of love, undimmed by any thought of
self, undisturbed by any breath of pain. Oh, this victory of the spirit
over the flesh, of soul over body, which humanity achieves and renews
from day to day and from age to age, in all those nobler and finer
personalities upon whom the moral life of the world depends! How it burns
its testimony into the heart of the spectator! How it makes him thrill
with the apprehension which lies at the root of all religion--the
apprehension of an ideal order--the divine suspicion

'That we are greater than we know!'

How it impresses itself upon us as the only miracle which will bear our
leaning upon, and stand the strain of human questioning! It was borne in
upon Eustace, as he sat bowed beside his dying sister, that through this
fragile body and this failing breath the Eternal Mind was speaking, and
that in Marie's love the Eternal Love was taking voice. He said so to her
brokenly, and her sweet eyes smiled back upon him a divine answer of
peace and faith.

Then she called faintly, 'Paul!' The distant figure came back; and she
laid her head upon her husband's breast, while Eustace was gently drawn
away by the nurse. Presently, he found himself mechanically taking food
and mechanically listening to the low-voiced talk of the kindly
white-capped woman who was attending to him. Every fact, every
impression, was misery,--these details so unexpected, so irrevocable, so
charged with terrible meaning, which the nurse was pouring out upon
him,--that presence in the neighbouring room of which his every nerve was
conscious,--and in front of him, like a frowning barrier shutting off the
view of the future, the advancing horror of death! Yesterday, at the same
time, he had been walking along the sandy Surrey roads, delighting in the
last autumn harmonies of colour, and conscious of the dawn of a period of
rest after a period of conflict, of the growth within him of a temper of
quiet and rational resignation to the conditions of life and of his own
individual lot, over the development of which the mere fact of his
sister's existence had exercised a strong and steadying influence. Life,
he had persuaded himself, was for him more than tolerable, even without
love and marriage. The world of thought was warm and hospitable to him;
he moved at ease within its friendly familiar limits; and in the world of
personal relations, one heart was safely his, the sympathy and trust and
tenderness of one hu