“Thank you, Clara, for your interest.  I am glad you have this faith you would fain lead me to.  Not for worlds would I unsettle it, even if I could.  You are comforted in your religion, and it is a priceless blessing to you.  But I am sincere, even in my skepticism.  I am honest; and God, if he sees my heart, sees that I am.  I may be an infidel, as you call me, but, if so, I am an honest one; and if the Bible is all true, as you believe, God will judge my heart.  But I shall not always be skeptical; I shall find the truth yet.  I know it is a tedious journey I have set out on, and it may be my life will be spent in the search; but what of that, if at last I attain the goal?  What if I only live to reach it?  What will my life be to me without it?”

“And can you contentedly contemplate your future, passed as this last year has been?” cried Clara.

“Perhaps ‘contentedly’ is scarcely the right term.  I shall not murmur, no matter how dreary the circumstances of my life may be, provided I succeed at last,” replied Beulah resolutely.

“Oh, Beulah, you make my heart ache!”

“Then try not to think of or care for me.”

“There is another heart, dear Beulah, a heart sad but noble, that you are causing bitter anguish.  Are you utterly indifferent to this also?”

“All of the last exists merely in your imagination.  We will say no more about it, if you please.”

She immediately began a brilliant overture, and Clara retreated to the window.  With night the roar of the tempest increased; the rain fell with a dull, uninterrupted patter, the gale swept furiously on, and the heaving, foaming waters of the bay gleamed luridly beneath the sheet-lightning.  Clara stood looking out, and before long Beulah joined her; then the former said suddenly: 

“Do you remember that, about six years ago, a storm like this tossed the ‘Morning Star’ far from its destined track, and for many days it was unheard of?  Do you remember, too, that it held one you loved; and that, in an agony of dread lest he should find a grave among coral beds, you bowed your knee in prayer to Almighty God, imploring him to calm the tempest, hush the gale, and save him who was so dear to you?  Ah, Beulah, you distrusted human pilots then!”

As Beulah made no reply, she fancied she was pondering her words.  But memory had flown back to the hour when she knelt in prayer for Eugene, and she thought she could far better have borne his death then, in the glorious springtime of his youth, than know that he had fallen from his noble height.  Then she could have mourned his loss and cherished his memory ever after; now she could only pity and despise his folly.  What was that early shipwreck she so much dreaded, in comparison with the sea of vice, whose every wave tossed him helplessly on to ruin.  He had left her an earnest believer in religion; he came back scoffing at everything sacred.  This much she had learned from Cornelia.  Was there an intimate connection between the revolutions in his nature?  Misled by her silence, Clara said eagerly: