"Are you and I able to understand the condition of heart that is not
only resigned, but eager to meet Him Whom they hope to meet--able so
fully to understand that we can judge its worth?"

He knew her face so well that he seemed to see the hint of sarcasm come
in the arching of her handsome eyebrows as she spoke.

"I fear they realise their hope but little," he replied. "The excitement
of some hysterical outbreak is what they seek."

"It seems to me that is an ungenerous and superficial view, especially
as we have never seen the same people courting hysterics before," she
said; but she did not speak as if she cared much which view he took.

Her lack of interest in his opinion, quite as much as her frank reproof,
offended him. They walked in silence for some minutes. Thunder, which
had been rumbling in the distance, came nearer and every now and then a
flash from an approaching storm lit up the dark land with a pale, vivid
light.

"Even setting their motives at the highest estimate," he said, "I do not
know that you, or even I, Miss Rexford, need hold ourselves incapable of
entering into them." This was not exactly what he would have felt if
left to himself, but it was what her upbraiding wrung from him. He
continued: "Even if we had the sure expectation for to-night that they
profess to have, I am of opinion that we should express our devotion
better by patient adherence to our ordinary duties, by doing all we
could for the world up to the moment of His appearing."

"Our ordinary duties!" she cried; "_they_ are always with us! I dare say