un and shower,
even so she grew and blossomed and was fair to look upon. As the flowers
of the field wither away in parching drought, even so would the beauty
of happiness fall from her shrinking soul. She was of a religious
nature, not because of a consciousness of its necessity to the human
soul, but because, to her, God was love and his works beautiful to look
upon. God to her was impersonal, because in her was not strength of
intellect to construct an entity from its manifestations. When Elijah
Berl came to her, she received him as a god. Her love was not selective;
it was responsive. Henceforth her daily prayers on her bended knees were
to her husband, not to the Divine Giver of every good and perfect gift.
Even when her first-born lay in her arms, the light that shone in her
eyes was not the giving of maternal love, but the thrill of assurance
that the helpless mite was but another bond that bound her happiness to
her soul and made it more her own. She gave with the unconscious
selfishness of a perfect mirror that which she received, no more, no
less.

Elijah Berl had not yet realized what his wife was, because he was
selfish in another way. He saw himself in his wife. For the present,
this sufficed. Five years of struggle in the land of golden promise had
not lessened his faith in himself, had not wearied his restless energy,
nor dulled his faith in his God. From New England's granite hills, he
believed God's hand had led him to this distant field. Since the day of
his birth, the firm, unwavering, fanatical belief that the Bible was
God's direct, unchangeable revelation to man, made him, as it had made
his father, impregnable to the assaults of reason. The figurative,
semi-scriptural language of his father and of his father's father had
been as the breath of his nostrils. It had become a part of him as it
was of his father. It was neither cant nor hypocrisy. "As it was
written," was an unanswerable dictum. The very things that had shaken
and are shaking to its foundation the faith in the Bible as an
infallible guide, only rooted Elijah the more firmly in his belief. In
California as in New England, he felt that in good time God's hand would
point out the work which He had planned for him to do. He was marking
time with restless steps, ready to swing into action when God should
give the word. Only one part of his work had he forecast in his mind. A
son of the soil, in the soil was his work to be. This was his unsh