, Miss Meredith--is a man's conscience enough for his
guidance?" said the curate.

"I don't know any thing about a man's conscience," answered Juliet.

"A woman's then?" said the curate.

"What else has she got?" returned Juliet.

The doctor was inwardly cursing the curate for talking shop. Only, if a
man knows nothing so good, so beautiful, so necessary, as the things in
his shop, what else ought he to talk--especially if he is ready to give
them without money and without price? The doctor would have done better
to talk shop too.

"Of course he has nothing else," answered the curate; "and if he had, he
must follow his conscience all the same."

"There you are, Wingfold!--always talking paradoxes!" said Faber.

"Why, man! you may only have a blundering boy to guide you, but if he is
your only guide, you must follow him. You don't therefore call him a
sufficient guide!"

"What a logomachist you are! If it is a horn lantern you've got, you
needn't go mocking at it."

"The lantern is not the light. Perhaps you can not change your horn for
glass, but what if you could better the light? Suppose the boy's father
knew all about the country, but you never thought it worth while to send
the lad to him for instructions?"

"Suppose I didn't believe he had a father? Suppose he told me he
hadn't?"

"Some men would call out to know if there was any body in the house to
give the boy a useful hint."

"Oh bother! I'm quite content with my fellow."

"Well, for my part I should count my conscience, were it ten times
better than it is, poor company on any journey. Nothing less than the
living Truth ever with me can make existence a peace to me,--that's the
joy of the Holy Ghost, Miss Meredith.--What if you should find one day,
Faber, that, of all facts, the thing you have been so coolly refusing
was the most precious and awful?"

Faber had had more than enough of it. There was but one thing precious
to him; Juliet was the perfect flower of nature, the apex of law, the
last presentment of evolution, the final reason of things! The very soul
of the world stood there in the dusk, and there also stood the foolish
curate, whirling his little vortex of dust and ashes between him and
her!

"It comes to this," said Faber; "what you say moves nothing in me. I am
aware of no need, no want of that Being of whom you speak. Surely if in
Him I did live and move and have my being, as some old heathen taught
your Saul of Tarsus, I shou