“Thee’s a reckless little fire-eater!” said David, watching his figure as it appeared and disappeared.  “How youth trifles with forces whose powers it can neither measure nor control!  It was well that I drew a furrow around our cabin or it would have been burned.”

His gaze was fixed on the little cabin which seemed to dance and oscillate in the palpitating light; and touched by the analogies and symbols which his penetrating eye discovered in the simple scenes of daily life, he continued to soliloquize, saying, “I should have drawn furrows around my life, before I played with fire!”

“Nay, David,” replied Pepeeta, “we should never have played with fire at all.”

“How wise we are—­too late!”

“Shall we walk any more cautiously when the next untried pathway opens?” he added, somewhat sadly, as he recalled the errors of the past.

“We ought to, if experience has any value,” said Pepeeta.

“But has it?  Or does it only interpret the past, and not point out the future?”

“Something of both, I think.”

“Well we must trust it.”

“But not it alone.  There is something, better and safer.”

“What is that, my love?”

“The path-finding instinct of the soul itself.”

“Do you believe there is such an instinct?”

“As much as I believe the carrier pigeon has it.  It is the inner light of which you told me.  You see, I remember my lesson like an obedient child.”

“Why, then, are we so often misled?” he asked, tempting her.

“Because we do not wholly trust it!” she said.

“But how can we distinguish the true light from the false, the instinct from imagination or desire?  If the soul has a hundred compasses pointing in different ways, what compass shall lead the bewildered mariner to know the true compass?”

“He who will know, can know.”

“Are you speaking from your heart, Pepeeta?”

“From its depths.”

“And have you no doubts that what you say is true?”

“None, for I learned it from a teacher whom I trust, and have justified it by my own experience.”

“And now the teacher must sit at the feet of the pupil!  Oh! beautiful instructress, keep your faith firm for my sake!  I have dark hours through which I have to pass and often lose my way.  The restoration of my spiritual vision is but slow.  How often am I bewildered and lost!  My thoughts brood and brood within me!”

“Put them away,” she said, cheerily.  “We live by faith and not by sight.  We need not be concerned with the distant future.  Let us live in this dear, divine moment.  I am here.  You are here!  We are together; our hands touch; our eyes meet; our hearts are one; we love!  Let us only be true to our best selves, and to the light that shines within!  Oh!  I have learned so much in these few months, among these people of peace, David!  They know the way of life!  We need go no farther to seek it.  It lies before us.  Let us follow it!”