looks were asking, concerning
the reason of her fearlessness in this great peril. There was a
momentary lull in the storm, and he suddenly walked towards her. It was
no time for the courtesies of the world, and he did not hesitate to
address her. "How is it that you alone can meet this appalling danger in
such perfect calm?" She answered him at once, as frankly as he spoke,
with a confiding, childlike smile upon her lips. "Because life, so far
as I have known it, has been so happy and so beautiful, that I believe
death must be more beautiful and happy still."

"What a marvellous doctrine; where can you have learned such untenable
philosophy?"

"I do not know what philosophy means. I have but said what I have been
taught by one who was my master. Life, which is a mystery, came to me
unasked, and I found it a most joyful thing; if death, a deeper mystery,
come alike unsought, why should I doubt it will be a yet more precious
gift? But look!" she continued eagerly, "is it not true that the storm
is abating?--the sailors are working cheerfully. Surely there is hope.
Oh! say that it is so; for, though I do not dread death, because I
believe that its gloom conceals some glorious joy, I do fear such
passage to it as this--the actual pain, the horror of drowning, the
sinking, choked and struggling, into that dark sea. Tell me, shall we
live?"

"Yes," he answered slowly, as he looked around the scene, where all gave
token that the tempest's wrath was spent. "I think, indeed, that the
danger is over; I think that we are saved. You may hear it in the
exulting of these trembling wretches who, but a few minutes since, were
crawling on the deck in abject supplication. Well, they have what they
asked, and soon they will curse the hour when their request was
granted."

She looked at him with an innocent surprise in her large, clear eyes.
She seemed to think him a being of a different nature from herself. At
last she spoke. "And now, since we two alone seemed well content to die,
when all others raved and shrieked for life, will you tell me why it was
that you were thus willing to be done of earth; for I can see it was not
because you believe, as I do, beauty, and goodness, and love in all
things, however dark and strange they seem as yet?"

"And did your master teach you," he said, with a bitter smile, "that
there is beauty in suffering?"

"Yes! in suffering, in pain, and death; for he said that beneath their
stern aspect there