so now; but it will be so--believe me."

"Mara," said Moses, "I never lived through such a day as this. It seems
as if every moment of my life had been passing before me, and every
moment of yours. I have seen how true and loving in thought and word and
deed you have been, and I have been doing nothing but take. You have
given love as the skies give rain, and I have drunk it up like the hot
dusty earth."

Mara knew in her own heart that this was all true, and she was too real
to use any of the terms of affected humiliation which many think a kind
of spiritual court language. She looked at him and answered, "Moses, I
always knew I loved most. It was my nature; God gave it to me, and it
was a gift for which I give him thanks--not a merit. I knew you had a
larger, wider nature than mine,--a wider sphere to live in, and that you
could not live in your heart as I did. Mine was all thought and feeling,
and the narrow little duties of this little home. Yours went all round
the world."

"But, oh Mara--oh, my angel! to think I should lose you when I am just
beginning to know your worth. I always had a sort of superstitious
feeling,--a sacred presentiment about you,--that my spiritual life, if
ever I had any, would come through you. It seemed if there ever was such
a thing as God's providence, which some folks believe in, it was in
leading me to you, and giving you to me. And now, to have all
lashed--all destroyed--It makes me feel as if all was blind chance; no
guiding God; for if he wanted me to be good, he would spare you."

Mara lay with her large eyes fixed on the now faded sky. The dusky
shadows had dropped like a black crape veil around her pale face. In a
few moments she repeated to herself, as if she were musing upon them,
those mysterious words of Him who liveth and was dead, "Except a corn of
wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; if it die, it
bringeth forth much fruit."

"Moses," she said, "for all I know you have loved me dearly, yet I have
felt that in all that was deepest and dearest to me, I was alone. You
did not come near to me, nor touch me where I feel most deeply. If I had
lived to be your wife, I cannot say but this distance in our spiritual
nature might have widened. You know, what we live with we get used to;
it grows an old story. Your love to me might have grown old and worn
out. If we lived together in the commonplace toils of life, you would
see only a poor threadbare wife. I migh