are Prince Ferdinand," said Mara.

"And you are Miranda," said he.

"Ah!" she said with fervor, "how plainly we can see that our heavenly
Father has been guiding our way! How good He is,--and how we must try to
live for Him,--both of us."

A sort of cloud passed over Moses's brow. He looked embarrassed, and
there was a pause between them, and then he turned the conversation.

Mara felt pained; it was like a sudden discord; such thoughts and
feelings were the very breath of her life; she could not speak in
perfect confidence and unreserve, as she then spoke, without uttering
them; and her finely organized nature felt a sort of electric
consciousness of repulsion and dissent. She grew abstracted, and they
walked on in silence.

"I see now, Mara, I have pained you," said Moses, "but there are a class
of feelings that you have that I have not and cannot have. No, I cannot
feign anything. I can understand what religion is in you, I can admire
its results. I can be happy, if it gives you any comfort; but people are
differently constituted. I never can feel as you do."

"Oh, don't say never," said Mara, with an intensity that nearly startled
him; "it has been the one prayer, the one hope, of my life, that you
might have these comforts,--this peace."

"I need no comfort or peace except what I shall find in you," said
Moses, drawing her to himself, and looking admiringly at her; "but pray
for me still. I always thought that my wife must be one of the sort of
women who pray."

"And why?" said Mara, in surprise.

"Because I need to be loved a great deal, and it is only that kind who
pray who know how to love really. If you had not prayed for me all this
time, you never would have loved me in spite of all my faults, as you
did, and do, and will, as I know you will," he said, folding her in his
arms, and in his secret heart he said, "Some of this intensity, this
devotion, which went upward to heaven, will be mine one day. She will
worship me."

"The fact is, Mara," he said, "I am a child of this world. I have no
sympathy with things not seen. You are a half-spiritual creature,--a
child of air; and but for the great woman's heart in you, I should feel
that you were something uncanny and unnatural. I am selfish, I know; I
frankly admit, I never disguised it; but I love your religion because it
makes you love me. It is an incident to that loving, trusting nature
which makes you all and wholly mine, as I want you to be. I wa