the morning; the blue of the sky, soft and tender as a mother's eye, with
here and there a fleecy cloud such as painters love to put on their
canvas. Away to the south, the sea was dimpling and sparkling in ten
thousand broken ripples, with here and there a brave vessel sailing away
over the cold, heaving waters.

Mr. Winthrop seemed in more genial mood than he had been for a week; and
when he left the table I followed him to the door, where he stood gazing
with eyes trained to take in intelligently the charming scene. I stood
silent, entering in a very half-hearted manner into his keen enjoyment
of the picture painted by God's own hand, spread out before us.

"It is no use for a man to attempt copying that living, throbbing scene,
nor yet to describe it," he said, with an air of dissatisfaction.

"To copy would be easy, compared with creating it," I suggested timidly.

"Yes; but when, and by whom done? That is the question that maddens one,"
he answered after a long pause.

"The Bible says the same hand that was nailed to the cross on Calvary
created it. 'By whom also the worlds were made,'" I murmured.

"Ah, if we only had some evidence of that; but it is all dark, dark, on
the other side of death, and on the other side of life too. Whence came
we--whither do we tend? What power sent Sirius and all that galaxy of
suns marching serenely through space? We, in our little planet-ship,
falling into line, going like comets one day, and then vanishing; but the
worlds moving on unconscious of our departure, and yet some power
controls them and us. Medoline, to have my faith anchored as yours is, to
a beneficent, all-powerful God, I would be willing to die this instant if
I might be absorbed into Him, or be taken into his presence forever. You
who can calmly accept your religion as you do the atmosphere you inhale,
should live as far above earthly passions and entanglements, as those
light clouds hanging in yonder vault are above the earth; nay, rather
like the stars which only touch us by that law of the universe that
holds the remotest stars together."

"Have you tried any more earnestly to find the God of the Bible than you
have done Boodh or Vishnu, or other man-created deities?" I asked.

He turned to me in his keen, incisive way:--"No, Medoline, I cannot say
that I have--not since boyhood, at least, when my mother, who loved the
God whom Israel served so indifferently, endeavored to train my
rebellious will to His