what the Soul demands it receives.


* * *
* *
*

At a time of year when the indolent languors of an exceptionally
warm summer disinclined most people for continuous hard work, and
when those who could afford it had left their ordinary avocations
for the joys of a long holiday, I received a pressing invitation
from certain persons whom I had met by chance during one London
season, to join them in a yachting cruise. My intending host was an
exceedingly rich man, a widower with one daughter, a delicate and
ailing creature who, had she been poor, would have been irreverently
styled 'a tiresome old maid,' but who by reason of being a
millionaire's sole heiress was alluded to with sycophantic
tenderness by all and sundry as 'Poor Miss Catherine.' Morton
Harland, her father, was in a certain sense notorious for having
written and published a bitter, cold and pitiless attack on
religion, which was the favourite reading of many scholars and
literary men, and this notable performance, together with the well
accredited reports of his almost fabulous wealth, secured for him
two social sets,--the one composed of such human sharks as are
accustomed to swim round the plutocrat,--the other of the cynical,
listless, semi-bored portion of a so-called cultured class who,
having grown utterly tired of themselves, presumed that it was
clever to be equally tired of God. I was surprised that such a man
as he was should think of including me among his guests, for I had
scarcely exchanged a dozen words with him, and my acquaintance with