“No! and it is precisely for that reason that I ask assistance from you now.”

“I suppose you are reduced to the last necessity.  What has become of your pride, Beulah?”

“It is all here, in my heart, sir! thundering to me to walk out and leave you, since you are so unlike yourself!”

He looked stern and indescribably sad.  She glanced up an instant at his fascinating eyes, and then, laying her head down on his arm, as she used to do in childhood, said resolutely: 

“Oh, sir! you must aid me.  Whom have I to advise me but you?”

“My advice has about as much weight with you as Charon’s would, could he utter it.  I am an admirable counselor only so long as my opinions harmonize with the dictates of your own will.  How am I to aid you?  I went, at twelve o’clock last night, to see a dying man, and, passing along the street, saw a light burning from your window.  Two hours later, as I returned, it glimmered there still.  Why were you up?  Beulah, what is the matter with you?  Has your last treatise on the ‘Origin of Ideas’ run away with those of its author, and landed you both in a region of vagaries?  Remember, I warned you.”

“Something worse, sir.”  “Perhaps German metaphysics have stranded you on the bleak, bald cliffs of Pyrrhonism?”

“Sir, it seems to me there is a great deal of unmerited odium laid upon the innocent shoulders of German metaphysics.  People declaim against the science of metaphysics, as if it were the disease itself; whereas it is the remedy.  Metaphysics do not originate the trouble; their very existence proves the priority of the disease which they attempt to relieve—­”

“Decidedly a homeopathic remedy,” interrupted her guardian, smiling.

“But, sir, the questions which disturb my mind are older than my acquaintance with so-called philosophic works.  They have troubled me from my childhood.”

“Nevertheless, I warned you not to explore my library,” said he, with a touch of sorrow in his voice.

“How, then, can you habitually read books which you are unwilling to put into my hands?”

“To me all creeds and systems are alike null.  With you, Beulah, it was once very different.”

“Once! yes, once!” She shuddered at the wild waste into which she had strayed.

“What are the questions that have so long disturbed you?”

“Questions, sir, which, all my life, have been printed on evening sun-flushed clouds, on rosy sea shells, on pale, sweet, delicate blossoms, and which I have unavailingly sought to answer for myself.  There are mysteries in physics, morals, and metaphysics that have wooed me on to an investigation; but the further I wander, deeper grows the darkness.  Alone and unaided I have been forced to brave these doubts; I have studied, and read, and thought.  Cloudy symbolisms mock me on every side; and the more earnestly I strive to overtake truth the tighter grow