f poverty; her beauty and goodness would be
best nurtured beneath an affluent sun. Wants and inconveniences would
rather pain and mystify than educate her. How good was that God who
had vouchsafed not only the blessing, but the means of enjoying it!

God gave Balder Helwyse opportunity to prove the soundness of his
faith. Labor and poverty awaited him; what else and worse let time
show. In anguish, fear, and humiliation had his love been born, but
the birth-pangs had been as brief as they were intense. A brave soul's
metal is more severely tried by crawling years of monotonous effort,
discord of must with wish, and secret self-suppression and misgiving.
Happily life is so ordered that no blow can crush unless dealt from
within, nor is any sunshine worth having that shines only from
without.

Balder's eyes were softer than their wont, and there was a tender and
sweet expression about his mouth. Never had life been so inestimable a
blessing,--never had nature looked so divinely alive. He could imagine
nothing gloomy or forbidding; in darkness's self he would have found
germs of light. His love was a panoply against ill of mind or body. He
thought he perceived, once for all, the insanity of selfishness and
sin.

Suddenly he was conscious through Gnulemah of the same shiver that had
visited her in the conservatory that morning. Looking round, he was
startled to see, beyond the near benison of her sumptuous face, the
tall form of the Egyptian priest. He was not a dozen yards away,
advancing slowly towards them. Balder sprang up.

"Our chain,--you have broken it!" exclaimed Gnulemah. It was only a
flower chain, but flowers are the bloom and luxury of life.

Manetho came up with a smile.

"Come, my children!" said he. "This chain would soon have faded and
fallen apart of itself, but the chain I will forge you is stronger
than time and weightier than dandelions. Come!"

Gnulemah picked up the broken links, and they followed him to the
house.

XXXI.

MARRIED.

The significant part of most life histories is the record of a few
detached hours, the rest being consequence and preparation. Helwyse
had lived in constant mental and physical activity from childhood up;
but though he had speculated much, and ever sought to prove the truth
by practice, yet he had failed to create adequate emergencies, and was
like an untried sword, polished and keen, but lacking still the one
stern proof of use.

Thus, although a m