and Lazarus, you know. But God does what is best for them as well as
for us. We shall find one day that beauty and riches were the best
thing for those to whom they were given, as deformity and poverty
were the best for us."

"I wonder what sort of person I should have been if I had had a
straight spine!" said Rachel laughing.

"Hardly one so dear to your deformed uncle," said her companion in
ugliness.

"Then I'm glad I am as I am," rejoined Rachel.

"This conscious individuality of ours," said Polwarth, after a
thoughtful silence, "is to me an awful thing--the one thing that
seems in humanity like the onliness of God. Mine terrifies me
sometimes--looking a stranger to me--a limiting of myself--a
breaking in upon my existence--like a volcanic outburst into the
blue Sicilian air. When it thus manifests itself, I find no refuge
but the offering of it back to him who thought it worth making. I
say to him: 'Lord, it is thine, not mine;--see to it, Lord. Thou and
thy eternity are mine, Father of Jesus Christ.'"

He covered his eyes with his hands, and his lips grew white, and
trembled. Thought had turned into prayer, and both were silent for a
space. Rachel was the first to speak.

"I think I understand, uncle," she said. "I don't mind being God's
dwarf. But I would rather be made after his own image; this can't be
it. I should like to be made over again."