"We can never be more than friends; never!" cried Beulah.
"You think so now, and perhaps I am doomed to disappointment; but, without your sanction, I shall hope it. Good-by." He pressed his lips to her hand and walked away.
Beulah heard the closing of the little gate, and then, for the first time, his meaning flashed upon her mind. He believed she loved her guardian; fancied that long absence would obliterate his image from her heart, and that, finally, grown indifferent to one who might never return, she would give her love to him whose constancy merited it. Genuine delicacy of feeling prevented his expressing all this; but she was conscious now that only this induced his unexpected course toward herself. A burning flush suffused her face as she exclaimed:
"Oh, how unworthy I am of such love as his! how utterly undeserving!"
Soon after, opening the book he had brought at the place designated, she drew the lamp near her and began its perusal. Hour after hour glided away, and not until the last page was concluded did she lay it aside. The work contained very little that was new; the same trains of thought had passed through her mind more than once before; but here they were far more clearly and forcibly expressed.
She drew her chair to the window, threw up the sash, and looked out. It was wintry midnight, and the sky blazed with its undying watch- fires. This starry page was the first her childish intellect had puzzled over. She had, from early years, gazed up into the glittering temple of night, and asked: "Whence came yon silent worlds, floating in solemn grandeur along the blue, waveless ocean of space? Since the universe sprang phoenix-like from that dim chaos, which may have been but the charnel-house of dead worlds, those unfading lights have burned on, bright as when they sang together at the creation. And I have stretched out my arms helplessly to them, and prayed to hear just once their unceasing chant of praise to the Lord of Glory. Will they shine on forever? or are they indeed God's light-bearers, set to illumine the depths of space and blaze a path along which the soul may travel to its God? Will they one day flicker and go out?" To every thoughtful mind these questions propound themselves, and Beulah especially had essayed to answer them. Science had named the starry hosts, and computed their movements with wonderful skill; but what could it teach her of their origin and destiny? Absolutely nothing. And how stood her investigations in the more occult departments of psychology and ontology? An honest seeker of truth, what had these years of inquiry and speculation accomplished? Let her answer as, with face bowed on her palms, her eyes roved over the midnight sky.
"Once I had some principles, some truths clearly defined; but now I know nothing distinctly, believe nothing. The more I read and study the more obscure seem the questions I am toiling to answer. Is this increasing intricacy the reward of an earnestly inquiring mind? Is this to be the end of all my glorious aspirations? Have I come to this? 'Thus far, and no farther.' I have stumbled on these boundaries many times, and now must I rest here? Oh, is this my recompense? Can this be all? All!" Smothered sobs convulsed her frame.
She had long before rejected a "revealed code" as unnecessary; the next step was to decipher nature's symbols, and thus grasp God's hidden laws; but here the old trouble arose. How far was "individualism" allowable and safe? To reconcile the theories of rationalism, she felt, was indeed a herculean task, and she groped on into deeper night. Now and then her horizon was bestarred, and, in her delight, she shouted, "Eureka!" But when the telescope of her infallible reason was brought to bear upon the coldly glittering points, they flickered and went out. More than once a flaming comet, of German manufacture, trailed in glory athwart her dazzled vision; but close observation resolved the gilded nebula, and the nucleus mocked her. Doubt engendered doubt; the death of one difficulty was the instant birth of another. Wave after wave of skepticism surged over her soul, until the image of a great personal God was swept from its altar. But atheism never yet usurped the sovereignty of the human mind; in all ages, moldering vestiges of protean deism confront the giant specter, and every nation under heaven has reared its fane to the "unknown God." Beulah had striven to enthrone in her desecrated soul the huge, dim, shapeless phantom of pantheism, and had turned eagerly to the system of Spinoza. The heroic grandeur of the man's life and character had strangely fascinated her; but now, that idol of a "substance, whose two infinite attributes were extension and thought," mocked her; and she hurled it from its pedestal, and looked back wistfully to the pure faith of her childhood. A Godless world; a Godless woman. She took up the lamp and retired to her own room. On all sides books greeted her; here was the varied lore of dead centuries; here she had held communion with the great souls entombed in these dusty pages. Here, wrestling alone with those grim puzzles, she had read out the vexed and vexing questions, in this debating club of the moldering dead, and endeavored to make them solve them. These well-worn volumes, with close "marginalias," echoed her inquiries, but answered them not to her satisfaction. Was her life to be thus passed in feverish toil and ended as by a leap out into a black, shoreless abyss? Like a spent child she threw her arms on the mantelpiece and wept uncontrollably, murmuring:
"Oh, better die now than live as I have lived, in perpetual stragglings! What is life worth without peace of mind, without hope; and what hope have I? Diamonded webs of sophistry can no longer entangle; like Noah's dove, my soul has fluttered among them, striving in vain for a sure hold to perch upon; but, unlike it, I have no ark to flee to. Weary and almost hopeless, I would fain believe that this world is indeed as a deluge, and in it there is no ark of refuge but the Bible. It is true, I did not see this souls' ark constructed; I know nothing of the machinery employed; and no more than Noah's dove can I explore and fully understand its secret chambers; yet, all untutored, the exhausted bird sought safety in the incomprehensible, and was saved. As to the mysteries of revelation and inspiration, why, I meet mysteries, turn which way I will. Man, earth, time, eternity, God, are all inscrutable mysteries My own soul is a mystery unto itself, and so long as I am impotent to fathom its depths, how shall I hope to unfold the secrets of the universe?"
She had rejected Christian theism, because she could not understand how God had created the universe out of nothing. True, "with God, all things are possible"; but she could not understand this creation out of nothing, and therefore would not believe it. Yet (oh, inconsistency of human reasoning!) she had believed that the universe created laws; that matter gradually created mind. This was the inevitable result of pantheism; for, according to geology, there was a primeval period when neither vegetable nor animal life existed; when the earth was a huge mass of inorganic matter. Of two incomprehensibilities, which was the most plausible? To-night this question recurred to her mind with irresistible force, and, as her eyes wandered over the volumes she had so long consulted, she exclaimed: