ies. I shall never be able to
do anything to help the world; yet I see so much that might be
done. I shall not ever be able to lead that life of simple truth,
of absolute fidelity to high-set aims, which I yet believe it must
be in every man's power to live. Which is the more to be
despised--he who perceives a higher path and lacks the resolution
to adhere to it, or he who trots along the common road out of sheer
short-sightedness? Clearly the first. I am a worm. (You have
probably heard this before.)

Well, I am not a very gay companion; I shall leave you for to-day,
sweetest.

EMILIA.

LETTER IX.

Sunday evening.

I have made a fool of myself; and yet I am happier to-night than I
have been this many a day, for I have at least shown myself honest.
I did it foolishly, thoughtlessly, I know, and yet,--well, I don't
regret it.

I went to church this morning for the last time. I went with Aunt
Caroline, as usual, but, as I knelt beside her on entering the pew,
I was seized with a great horror of myself. There was I, hypocrite,
with silent lips and silent heart, feigning to share in the simple
fervour around me, denying my own faith, insulting that of another.
However, I sat and knelt and stood and went through all the forms
along with the rest. The sunlight streamed in at the windows, and
lay coloured on the dusty floor, on bowed head and Sunday bonnet;
through one little white window, just opposite me, I could see a
sparrow bobbing up and down on the ivy. Then away sailed my spirit,
through the church wall, over the meadows, and into the copse; I
pushed my way through the underwood, and picked up a leaf here and
there, listening to the gentle voice of the wood-pigeon. And
then--you know there is one thought into which all thoughts
resolve--I walked with you, dearest, on the hilltops by Fiesole;
she, too, was there, and you both laughed at me because I tried to
dig up a wild orchid with a flint, and got my hands so dirty.

Then we had that long talk about the possibility of an after-life,
which began with the bulb of the orchid--do you remember?

"Nothing is lost in Nature," said my mother. "There is no such thing
as annihilation; death is surely transubstantiation."

"Perhaps then, after all," said I, "the noblest part of us, the
self, that invisible core which we call soul, is just a drop, as it