--Yet when my soul on thee doth call
And thou dost answer out of everywhere,
I in thy allness have my perfect share.

While he read Rachel crept to his knee, knelt down, and laid her
head upon it.

If we are but the creatures of a day, yet surely were the
shadow-joys of this miserable pair not merely nobler in their
essence, but finer to the soul's palate than the shadow-joys of
young Hercules Bascombe--Helen and horses and all! Poor Helen I
cannot use for comparison, for she had no joy, save indeed the very
divine, though at present unblossoming one of sisterly love. Still,
and notwithstanding, if the facts of life are those of George
Bascombe's endorsing--AND HE CAN PROVE IT--let us by all means
learn and accept them, be they the worst possible. Meantime there
are truths that ought to be facts, and until he has proved that
there is no God, some of us will go feeling after him if haply we
may find him, and in him the truths we long to find true. Some of us
perhaps think we have seen him from afar, but we only know the
better that in the mood wherein such as Bascombe are, they will
never find him--which would no doubt be to them a comfort were it
not for a laughter. And if he be such as their idea of what we think
him, they ARE better without him. If, on the contrary, he be what
some of us really think him, their not seeking him will not perhaps
prevent him from finding them.

From likeness of nature, community of feeling, constant intercourse,
and perfect confidence, Rachel understood her uncle's verses with
sufficient ease to enjoy them at once in part, and, for the rest, to