between human beings, to learn that there was no such power to hurt them or aid them, or to claim lordship over them, and enslave them to his will.  For Juliet had never had a glimpse of the idea, that in oneness with the love-creating Will, alone lies freedom for the love created.  When Faber perceived that his words had begun and continued to influence her, he, on his part, grew more kindly disposed toward her superstitions.

Let me here remark that, until we see God as He is, and are changed into His likeness, all our beliefs must partake more or less of superstition; but if there be a God, the greatest superstition of all will be found to have consisted in denying him.

“Do not think me incapable,” he said one day, after they had at length slid back into their former freedom with each other, “of seeing much that is lovely and gracious in the orthodox fancies of religion.  Much depends, of course, upon the nature of the person who holds them.  No belief could be beautiful in a mind that is unlovely.  A sonnet of Shakespeare can be no better than a burned cinder in such a mind as Mrs. Ramshorn’s.  But there is Mr. Wingfold, the curate of the abbey-church! a true, honest man, who will give even an infidel like me fair play:  nothing that finds acceptance with him can be other than noble, whether it be true or not.  I fear he expects me to come over to him one day.  I am sorry he will be disappointed, for he is a fellow quite free from the flummery of his profession.  For my part, I do not see why two friends should not consent to respect each other’s opinions, letting the one do his best without a God to hinder him, and the other his best with his belief in one to aid him.  Such a pair might be the most emulous of rivals in good works.”

Juliet returned no satisfactory response to this tentative remark; but it was from no objection any longer in her mind to such a relation in the abstract.  She had not yet at all consented with herself to abandon the faith of her father, but she did not see, and indeed it were hard for any one in her condition to see, why a man and a woman, the one denying after Faber’s fashion, the other believing after hers, should not live together, and love and help each other.  Of all valueless things, a merely speculative theology is one of the most valueless.  To her, God had never been much more than a name—­a name, it is true, that always occurred to her in any vivid moment of her life; but the Being whose was that name, was vague to her as a storm of sand—­hardly so much her father as was the first forgotten ancestor of her line.  And now it was sad for her chat at such a time of peculiar emotion, when the heart is ready to turn of itself toward its unseen origin, feeling after the fountain of its love, the very occasion of the tide Godward should be an influence destructive of the same.  Under the growing fascination of the handsome, noble-minded doctor, she was fast losing what little shadow of faith she had possessed.