‘It is a beautiful story!’ was the comment; ‘and, like other traditions, full of unconscious meaning.’
A speech this, as if it had been made to delight Honor, whose eyes were met by a congratulatory glance from Phœbe. At the farther words, ‘It is very striking—the evil spirit’s power ending with the slaying the body, never harming the soul, nor bending the will—’
‘Bending the will is harming the soul,’ said Phœbe.
‘Nay,’ was her companion’s answer, ‘the fatal evil is, when both wills are bent.’
Phœbe was too single-minded, too single-willed, at once to understand this, till Miss Charlecote whispered a reference to St. Paul’s words of deep experience, ‘To will is present with me.’
‘I see,’ she said; ‘she might even have preferred the genie, but as long as her principle and better will resisted, she was safe from herself as well as from him.’
‘Liked the nasty genie?’ said Maria, who had listened only as
to a fairy tale. ‘Why, Phœbe, genies come out of bottles, and go away in smoke, Lieschen told me.’
‘No, indeed,’ said Bertha, in a low voice of feeling, piteous in one of her years, ‘if so, it needed no outward whirlwind to fling her dead on the coast!’
‘And there she found peace,’ answered the guest, with a suppressed, but still visible sign of weariness. ‘Oh! it was worth the whirlwind!’