They were of those rare types of mind which know just how far they can be together, and not detract from each other; just when the mental and spiritual assimilation was becoming attenuated, and each needed solitude.  Thus they were constantly coming each to the other, and consequently drew from exhaustless fountains of intellectual and physical strength.

Life is replete with harmonies ready to inflow, if we are but receptive and delicate enough to receive and appropriate them.  Blest are they who recognize life’s indications, its index-fingers which are pointing each hour to some new experience, which will deepen and expand our lives.

Generally there is great danger of two persons settling into themselves, as these two seemed to have done, but Basil and Beatrice were so catholic they could afford it, in fact they needed just the close companionship which they held.  The brother, with his colossal spirit, lofty and original, moving forward through life with that slow majesty which indicates the wholeness of the individual, unlike the airy advance of natures which rush with but one faculty quickened, and mistake speed for greatness, supplied the sister with that manly, noble quality, which must ever exist in the real or ideal of every woman.  No wonder her warm, beneficent nature expanded daily, until her heart seemed a garden full of flowers of love and gratitude.

Did life at times seem dim and hazy, and the mind full of a thousand doubts, he could dispel the cloud, wrench the truth from its old combinations, and present it to her in striking contrast with its opposite error.

No wonder that new purposes and aspirations were born every hour in that woman’s heart, impregnated by his manliness of quality.  Yet each drew through the subtle texture of soul a different hue of life, as in a bed of flowers, from the same sunlight, one draws crimson, another azure, as though conscious of the harmony of complement and difference.

“I feel a rich, deep vein of thought to-night,” said Beatrice, “as though I could write a poem or a book, so vivid are my thoughts.”

“Your life has been a poem, full of sweetly blended words.  You have lived yours out, while others have written theirs.”

“But there is such power in books, Basil.”

“I know it well.  ’Some books are drenched sands on which a great soul’s wealth lies all in heaps, like a wrecked argosy.’  And some are sweet and full of passion-tones, and you feel on every leaf that you are turning, as though their heart-beats were going into yours; that they were dying that you might have life.  Books are indeed great, but lives are greater; lives that are full of earnest purpose, and that fail not, even though the tide beats strong about them and the heavens hang thick and dark with clouds.  The greatest poems are true lives, now surging with grief and passion, now pulsing with joy-notes, thrilling on each page of life.  Some books, as well as persons, make us feel as though we stood in the presence of a king, while some give us tears.  Some books and some beings dome us like a sky.  Sister, you are the dome which ever overarches my life,—­if day, with its azure and ermine clouds; if night, with its stars.  Nay, do not write a book, but breathe and live your life out each day.”