sounds of nature streamed in upon her, forming now a soft undercurrent,
now a delicious accompaniment which filled the interval between what she
knew of this world and all that she dreamt of the next. The cycle of
sensation was complete, and in a moment her whole being blossomed into
gladness. Her intellectual activity was suspended--her senses awoke. It
was the morning of life with her, and she sank upon her knees, and lifted
up her heart to express the joy of it in one ecstatic note: "O blessed
Lord!"

Lord of the happy earth! Lord of the sun and our senses. He who comes to
us first in Love's name, and bids us rejoice and be glad; not he who would
have us mourn.




CHAPTER X.


After the experiences of that early morning's walk Evadne did not go to
bed so late; she got up early and went to church. The agreeable working of
her intellectual faculties during the early part of her absorbing
self-education had kept her senses in abeyance; but when the discipline of
all regular routine was relaxed, they were set free to get the upper hand
if they would, and now they had begun to have their way--a delicate,
dreamy way, of a surety, but it was a sensuous way nevertheless, and not
at all a spiritual way, as her mother maintained it to be, because of the
church-going. Sometimes sense, sometimes intellect, is the first to awake
in us--supposing we are dowered with an intellect; but pain, which is the
perfecting of our nature, must precede the soul's awakening and for Evadne