“You do him injustice.  He has a creed (true, it is pantheistic), which he steadfastly adheres to under all circumstances.”

“Oh, has he! indeed?  Then he flatly contradicts you when he says, ’But lest I should mislead any, when I have my own head, and obey my whims, let me remind the reader that I am only an experimenter.  Do not set the least value on what I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as if I pretended to settle anything as true or false.  I unsettle all things.  No facts are to me sacred; none are profane.  I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no past at my back.’  To my fancy that savors strongly of nihilism, as regards creeds.”

“There is no such passage in Emerson!” cried Cornelia, stamping one foot, unconsciously, on her blazing necklace.

“Yes, the passage is, word for word, as I quoted it, and you will find it in ‘Circles.’”

“I have read ‘Circles’ several times, and do not remember it.  At all events, it does not sound like Emerson.”

“For that matter, his own individual circle of ideas is so much like St. Augustine’s Circle, of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere,’ that I am not prepared to say what may or may not be found within it.  You will ultimately think with me that, though an earnest and profound thinker, your master is no Memnon, waking only before the sunlight of truth.  His utterances are dim and contradictory.”

She replaced the book on the table, and, taking up a small basket, resumed her sewing.

“But, Beulah, did you not accept his ’Law of Compensation’?”

“I believe its operations are correct as regards mere social position—­wealth, penury, even the endowments of genius.  But further than this I do not accept it.  I want to believe that my soul is immortal.  Emerson’s ‘Duration of the Attributes of the Soul’ does not satisfy me.  I desire something more than an immutability, or continued existence hereafter, in the form of an abstract idea of truth, justice, love, or humility.”

Cornelia looked at her steadily, and, after a pause, said with indescribable bitterness and despair: 

“If our past and present shadows the future, I hope that my last sleep may be unbroken and eternal.”

Beulah raised her head and glanced searchingly at her companion; then silently went on with her work.

“I understand your honest face.  You think I have no cause to talk so.  You see me surrounded by wealth,—­petted, indulged in every whim,—­and you fancy that I am a very enviable woman; but—­”

“There you entirely mistake me,” interrupted Beulah, with a cold smile.