deeper nature, whether in man or woman, while possessed of every
other delicate instinct, should so often lack that most invaluable
one of preserving itself front contamination with what is of a baser
kind! Sometimes, it is true, the spiritual fountain is kept pure by
a wisdom within itself, and sparkles into the light of heaven
without a stain from the earthy strata through which it had gushed
upward. And sometimes, even here on earth, the pure mingles with
the pure, and the inexhaustible is recompensed with the infinite.
But these miracles, though he should claim the credit of them, are
far beyond the scope of such a superficial agent in human affairs as
the figure in the mysterious spectacles.

Again the door was opened, admitting the bustle of the city with a
fresher reverberation into the Intelligence Office. Now entered a
man of woe-begone and downcast look; it was such an aspect as if he
had lost the very soul out of his body, and had traversed all the
world over, searching in the dust of the highways, and along the
shady footpaths, and beneath the leaves of the forest, and among the
sands of the sea-shore, in hopes to recover it again. He had bent
an anxious glance along the pavement of the street as he came
hitherward; he looked also in the angle of the doorstep, and upon
the floor of the room; and, finally, coming up to the Man of
Intelligence, he gazed through the inscrutable spectacles which the
latter wore, as if the lost treasure might be hidden within his
eyes.

"I have lost--" he began; and then he paused.

"Yes," said the Intelligencer, "I see that you have lost,--but
what?"