"I, like that? Why should I not?"
"You have to-day shown such clearness of thought, that I cannot comprehend your giving utterance to an expression so common on the lips of thousands. What does it mean, when one says, 'I would like to be somebody else'? If you were some one else, you would still not be a different person; and if you retain the consciousness you had before, you would not be some one else. To speak in this way is not only unreasonable, but, as I view it, irreligious."
Manna stopped, and Eric continued,—
"We are what we are, not through our own instrumentality, but through an eternal ordination for which we have no other name but God. We must try to reconcile ourselves to what we are, and to be happy in our condition, whether poorer rich, beautiful or ugly."
"Well, I will never again indulge or utter so irrational a thought," replied Manna, extending her hand to Eric. She trembled.
They walked along in silence. It began to be dusk in the shaded paths; neither of them spoke.
"I see my mother yonder," said Manna, sighing deeply as she stopped.
Did she not want to meet her mother while walking with Eric? She had often walked with him, and he seemed like a brother; there was no harm in being alone with him.
"I bid you farewell here," Manna added in a low tone. "What a day this has been! Has it been only a day?"
"And as this sun now going down," interposed Eric, "will again return, and be the same in good days and in evil days, so you have a true friend in me, one whose eye watches over you, and will watch over you until it shall be closed by death."