er Christian faith to
disturb her with various questionings. She rejoiced in this; for even
then, with all the calm serenity of her trust, it was doubtful if her
answers could have fully satisfied the austerities of his theological
traditions. Nay, she doubted, even, if the exuberance of her spirits
would not sometimes, in days to come, bound over the formalities of his
Sunday observance, and startle a corrective glance; but withal she knew
her trust was firm, and on this had full repose. Even the little rosary,
so obnoxious to the household of the parsonage, was, by its terrible
association with the death-scene of Madame Arles, endeared to her
tenfold; and she could not forbear the hope that the poor woman, at the
very last, by that clinging kiss upon the image of Christ, told a prayer
that might give access to His abounding mercy.

Nor did Adele seek to comprehend in their entireness all those wearisome
dogmatic utterances which were familiar to her tongue, and which she
could understand might form the steps to fulness of belief for the
rigorous mind of the Doctor: for herself there was other ladder of
approach, in finding which the emotional experiences of Reuben had been
of such signal service.

To Reuben himself those experiences, brought a temporary exhilaration,
but as yet no peace. He has a vague notion creeping over him, with
fearfully chilling effect, that his sensibilities have been wrought upon
rather than his reason; a confused sense of having yielded to
enthusiasms, which, if they once grow cool, will leave him to slump back
into a mire worse than the old. Therefore he must, by all possible
means, keep them at fever-heat. A dim consciousness, however, possessed
him, that, for the feeding of the necessary fires, there would be
needed an immense consumption of fuel,--such stock as an ordinary
experience could hardly hope to supply. By degrees, this consciousness
took the force of conviction, and he became painfully sensible of his
own limitations. There was a weary, matter-of-fact world to struggle
with, in whose homely cares and interests he must needs be a partner. He
could not wear the gyves of a Gabriel on the muddy streets of life, or
carry the ecstatic language of praise into the world's talk: if he
could, he would be reckoned insane, and not unjustly, since sanity is,
after all, but a term to express the average normal condition of mind.
He looked with something like envy upon the serene contentment