d from all thought of a future
life he shrank with a shuddering aversion, as from something ghastly and
unnatural. She had realized this difference more in the few days that
followed her betrothal than all her life before, for now first the
barrier of mutual constraint and misunderstanding having melted away,
each spoke with an _abandon_ and unreserve which made the acquaintance
more vitally intimate than ever it had been before. It was then that
Mara felt that while her sympathies could follow him through all his
plans and interests, there was a whole world of thought and feeling in
her heart where his could not follow her; and she asked herself, Would
it be so always? Must she walk at his side forever repressing the
utterance of that which was most sacred and intimate, living in a
nominal and external communion only? How could it be that what was so
lovely and clear in its reality to her, that which was to her as
life-blood, that which was the vital air in which she lived and moved
and had her being, could be absolutely nothing to him? Was it really
possible, as he said, that God had no existence for him except in a
nominal cold belief; that the spiritual world was to him only a land of
pale shades and doubtful glooms, from which he shrank with dread, and
the least allusion to which was distasteful? and would this always be
so? and if so, could she be happy?

But Mara said the truth in saying that the question of personal
happiness never entered her thoughts. She loved Moses in a way that made
it necessary to her happiness to devote herself to him, to watch over
and care for him; and though she knew not how, she felt a sort of
presentiment that it was through her that he must be brought into
sympathy with a spiritual and immortal life.

All this passed through Mara's mind in the reverie into which Sally's
last words threw her, as she sat on the door-sill and looked off into
the starry distance and heard the weird murmur of the sea.

"How lonesome the sea at night always is," said Sally. "I declare, Mara,
I don't wonder you miss that creature, for, to tell the truth, I do a
little bit. It was something, you know, to have somebody to come in, and
to joke with, and to say how he liked one's hair and one's ribbons, and
all that. I quite got up a friendship for Moses, so that I can feel how
dull you must be;" and Sally gave a half sigh, and then whistled a tune
as adroitly as a blackbird.

"Yes," said Mara, "we two gir