answered, lifting her eyes to his with
a timid movement.

"I cannot be your companion," said Seraphitus sadly.

He seemed to repress some thoughts, then stretched his arms towards
Christiana, just visible like a speck on the horizon and said:--

"Look!"

"We are very small," she said.

"Yes, but we become great through feeling and through intellect,"
answered Seraphitus. "With us, and us alone, Minna, begins the knowledge
of things; the little that we learn of the laws of the visible world
enables us to apprehend the immensity of the worlds invisible. I know
not if the time has come to speak thus to you, but I would, ah, I would
communicate to you the flame of my hopes! Perhaps we may one day be
together in the world where Love never dies."

"Why not here and now?" she said, murmuring.

"Nothing is stable here," he said, disdainfully. "The passing joys of
earthly love are gleams which reveal to certain souls the coming of
joys more durable; just as the discovery of a single law of nature leads
certain privileged beings to a conception of the system of the universe.
Our fleeting happiness here below is the forerunning proof of another
and a perfect happiness, just as the earth, a fragment of the world,
attests the universe. We cannot measure the vast orbit of the Divine
thought of which we are but an atom as small as God is great; but we
can feel its vastness, we can kneel, adore, and wait. Men ever mislead
themselves in science by not perceiving that all things on their globe
are related and co-ordinated to the general evolution, to a constant
movement and production which bring with them, necessarily, both
advancement and an End. Man himself is not a finished creation; if he
were, God would not Be."

"How is it that in thy short life thou hast found the time to learn so
many things?" said the young girl.

"I remember," he replied.

"Thou art nobler than all else I see."

"We are the noblest of God's greatest works. Has He not given us the
faculty of reflecting on Nature; of gathering it within us by thought;
of making it a footstool and stepping-stone from and by which to rise
to Him? We love according to the greater or the lesser portion of heaven
our souls contain. But do not be unjust, Minna; behold the magnificence
spread before you. Ocean expands at your feet like a carpet; the
mountains resemble ampitheatres; heaven's ether is above them like the
arching folds of a stage curtain. Here we may breathe