to hear more, and made a great effort.

"I do not understand you," she said hoarsely, for in the stir of her
feelings she could not command a clear voice. "You say, He will be with
you. What do you mean? We cannot see him now. How will he be with you?"

She had raised her eyes, and she saw a strange softness and light pass
over the face she was looking at. Indefinable, unaccountable, she yet
saw it; a shining from the spiritual glory within, which Eleanor
recognized, though she had never seen it before. Fire and water were in
those bright eyes at once; and Eleanor guessed the latter evidence of
emotion was for his ignorant questioner. She had no heart left. By such
a flash of revelation the light from one spirit shewed the other its
darkness; dimly known to her before; but now, once and forever, she
knew where _she_ stood and where _he_ stood, and what the want of her
life must be, till she should stand there too. Her face shewed but a
little of the work going on with heavings and strugglings in her mind;
yet doubtless it was as readable to her companion as his had been to
her. She could only hear at the time--afterwards she pondered--the
words of his reply.

"I cannot shew him to you;--but he will shew himself to you, if you
seek him."

There was no chance for more words; Julia came in again; and was
thereafter bustling in and out, getting her cup of tea ready. Eleanor
could not meet her little sister's looks and probable words; she turned
hastily from the ferns and the couch and put herself at the window with
her back to everybody. There was a wild cry in her heart--"What shall I
do! what shall I do!" One thing she must have, or be miserable; how was
she to make it her own. As soon as she turned her face from that
cottage room and what was in it, she must meet the full blast of
opposing currents; unfavourable, adverse, overwhelming. Her light was
not strong enough to stand that blast, Eleanor knew; it would be blown
out directly;--and she left in darkness. In a desperate sense of this,
a desperate resolve to overcome it somehow, a despairing powerlessness
to contend, she sat at the window seeing nothing. She was brought to
herself at last by Julia's, "Eleanor--Mr. Rhys wants you to take a cup
of tea." Eleanor turned round mechanically, took the cup, and changed
her place for one near the fire.

She never forgot that scene. Julia's part in it gave it a most strange
air to Eleanor; so did her own. Julia was moving