to his mind as truly and unfailingly as his heart beat to the breath
of his lungs. She was as his inner life, and he felt himself strong
to guard and protect her as he would his own existence. She had
become one with him, and henceforth there was no separate existence
for these two.

So serenely and lovingly flowed their life in its interior light and
beauty, that cares and anxieties seemed scarce to touch their
states. True, these came to them in the guise of those calamities
and disappointments, that so often sweep as the destructive tornado
over the lower lives of the earth-loving children of men. But as
their affections were spiritual, they were not wounded by the
earth-sorrows. Their treasures were laid up _above_, where "moth and
rust doth not corrupt." Paul realized this when he saw Rosa hold her
dead baby in her arms and smile through her tears. And yet this was
her "little Paul" that she loved with such an intense delight and
devotion; because in him, all the day long, she saw that wonderful
life of God manifested in such a heavenly innocence and purity, as
in a tiny image of her own Paul. Yet, when the spirit of the child
was gone, she adorned the clay form in which it had dwelt, with such
loving care, and laid it in its little coffin, that her hand might
serve it to the very last, and then turned and rested her head in
the bosom of her husband as a wounded bird in its downy nest.

Paul's love seemed to lift her to the Heaven to which her baby had
gone; and when, after a few days, she urged him to leave her and go
to his office where his duties called him, Paul feared that she
would feel lonely, and would fain have stayed beside her. But she
said--