The moonlight fell on her features just then, almost transfiguring the still, pale countenance.  That holy moment brought them nearer than years of common-place emotions, or any of the external excitements of life.  A tenderer revealing of their relation to each other flashed through their hearts-a relation which the silvery moon, and still summer night typified, as all our states find their analogies in the external world.

“I often query,” said Dawn, breaking the silence, “what portion of your being I respond to?”

“I have often asked myself the same question.  Dawn, of those whom I loved, and in my earlier years felt ambitious to become the counterpart of friends dear to my life.  I have grown more humble now, and feel content to fill, as I know I only can, a portion of any soul.  I can truly say, you touch and thrill every part of my being, if you do not fill it, and that just now you answer to every part.  With some, my being stands still, I forget the past, and know no future.  There is one who thus acts upon me now, though many others have stirred me to greater depths, and excited profounder sentiments,—­this one calls forth the tenderest emotions of my heart and stimulates me to kindlier deeds.  Thus do all in turn act and re-act upon each other, and what we need is to know just how to define this relation, for the emotions it calls forth are so often mistaken for those of love between the sexes, which marriage seals, and in few years reveals the painful fact, that what was supposed to be soul blending with soul, was only the union of a single thought and feeling, while the remainder of their nature was wholly unresponded to, its deepest and holiest aspirations unmated.”

“Do we not answer to each other now, because we are aglow with life, and each susceptible to the others emotion?” asked Dawn.

“Something deeper,” said her friend.  “It is because we are both illumined by the divine essence which pervades all space and matter, as the air surrounds this globe.  We are both full, and reflect each other’s repletion.  The theme is grand, and one which I would like to enlarge upon to-night, before our states are changed to those harsher ones, in which diviner truths are ever refracted.”

“I feel the force of your last assertion most thrillingly,” said Dawn, “for I know that a purely mental condition is antagonistic to spiritual light.  How beautiful life becomes as we grow into the recognition of its laws, and learn of Him, who is law itself, and whose daily revealings, are the protecting arms around us.”

“Fully realizing this fractional mating of which we have spoken, I am led to question if we ever find one soul who meets every want, or whether we wander, gathering from this one, and that one, until the soul has all its emotions sounded, all its sentiments aroused and responded to.  In my deepest, most earnest questioning for truth, this answer seems to be the only one, which gives me rest.  How is it with you, whose vision is clearer than my own?”