The dusky fog retreats.

EMMA LAZARUS.

THE MARQUIS OF LOSSIE.

BY GEORGE MACDONALD, AUTHOR OF "MALCOLM."

CHAPTER LXI.

THOUGHTS.

When Malcolm took Kelpie to her stall the night of the arrival of Lady
Bellair and her nephew, he was rushed upon by Demon, and nearly prostrated
between his immoderate welcome and the startled rearing of the mare. The
hound had arrived a couple of hours before, while Malcolm was out. He
wondered he had not seen him with the carnage he had passed, never
suspecting he had had another conductress, or dreaming what his presence
there signified for him.

I have not said much concerning Malcolm's feelings with regard to Lady
Clementina, but all this time the sense of her existence had been like an
atmosphere surrounding and pervading his thought. He saw in her the
promise of all he could desire to see in woman. His love was not of the
blind-little-boy sort, but of a deeper, more exacting, keen-eyed kind,
that sees faults where even a true mother will not, so jealous is it of
the perfection of the beloved. But one thing was plain, even to this
seraphic dragon that dwelt sleepless in him--and there was eternal content
in the thought--that such a woman, once started on the right way, would
soon leave fault and weakness behind her, and become as one of the grand
women of old, whose religion was simply what religion is--life, neither
more nor less than life. She would be a saint without knowing it, the only
grand kind of sainthood. Whoever can think of religion as an addition to
life, however glorious--a starry crown, say, set upon the head of
humanity--is not yet the least in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever thinks of
life as a something that could be without religion is in deathly ignorance
of both. Life and religion are one, or neither is anything: I will not say
neither is growing to be anything. Religion is no way of life, no show of
life, no observance of any sort. It is neither the food nor medicine of
being. It is life essential. To think otherwise is as if a man should
pride himself on his honesty or his parental kindness, or hold up his head
amongst men because he never killed one: were he less than honest or kind
or free from blood, he would yet think something of himself. The man to
whom virtue is but the ornament of character, something over and above,
not essential to it, is not yet a man.

If I say, then, that Malcolm was always thinking about Lady Cl