asant. His words to her young ears
seemed full of poetry and sweet mysterious romance. He spoke to her
as no one,--no man or woman,--had ever spoken to her before. She had
a feeling, as painful as it was delicious, that the man's words were
sweet with a sweetness which she had known in her dreams. He had
asked her a question, and repeated it, so that she was all but driven
to answer him; but still she was full of the one great fact that he
had called her Rachel, and that he must be rebuked for so calling
her. But how could she rebuke a man who had bid her look at God's
beautiful works in such language as he had used?

"Yes, I see it; it is very grand; but--"

"There were the fingers, but you see how they are melting away. The
arm is there still, but the hand is gone. You and I can trace it
because we saw it when it was clear, but we could not now show it to
another. I wonder whether any one else saw that hand and arm, or only
you and I. I should like to think that it was shown to us, and us
only."

It was impossible for her now to go back upon that word Rachel. She
must pass it by as though she had not heard it. "All the world might
have seen it had they looked," said she.

"Perhaps not. Do you think that all eyes can see alike?"

"Well, yes; I suppose so."

"All eyes will see a loaf of bread alike, or a churchyard stile, but
all eyes will not see the clouds alike. Do you not often find worlds
among the clouds? I do."

"Worlds!" she said, amazed at his energy; and then she bethought
herself that he was right. She would never have seen that hand and
arm had he not been there to show it her. So she gazed down upon the
changing colours of the horizon, and almost forgot that she should
not have lingered there a moment.

And yet there was a strong feeling upon her that she was
sinking,--sinking,--sinking away into iniquity. She ought not to have
stood there an instant, she ought not to have been there with him at
all;--and yet she lingered. Now that she was there she hardly knew
how to move herself away.

"Yes; worlds among the clouds," he continued; but before he did so
there had been silence between them for a minute or two. "Do you
never feel that you look into other worlds beyond this one in which
you eat, and drink, and sleep? Have you no other worlds in your
dreams?" Yes; such dreams she had known, and now, she almost thought
that she could remember to have seen strange forms in the clouds. She
knew that h