"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.