"Yes, so it is claimed."
"And where does nature come from? God is the Divine Artist, and is furnishing themes for all other artists. God is the author of landscapes, mountains, rivers, of scenes like that we saw this morning, or of a fine face and a noble form, as truly as of a chapter in the Bible. He manifests Himself in these things. Now fine paintings, statuary, and music bring out the hidden meanings of nature, and therefore more clearly God's thought. Theology, or knowledge concerning our Creator, is a science to which everything can minister, and surely the appreciation of the beautiful should be learned in connection with the Author of all beauty."
"I never thought of God in that light before," said Lottie. "He has always seemed like one watching to catch me at something wrong. Our solemn old Sunday-school teacher used to say to us children just before we went home, 'Now during the week whenever you are tempted to do anything wrong, remember the text, "Thou, God, seest me."' When wasn't I tempted to do wrong? and I had for a long time the uncomfortable feeling that two great eyes were always staring at me. But this isn't sleigh-riding chit-chat," and she broke into a merry little trill from a favorite opera.
Hemstead, with his strong love of the beautiful, could not help watching her with deepening interest. The rapid motion, the music of the bells, the novel scenery of the sun-lighted, glittering world around her, and, chief of all, her own abounding health and animal life, combined to quicken her excitable nature into the keenest enjoyment. From her red lips came ripples of laughter, trills from operas, sallies of fun, that kept the entire party from the thought of heaviness, and to honest-minded Hemstead were the evidences of a happy, innocent heart.
With secret exultation she saw how rapidly and unconsciously the unwary student was passing under the spell of her beauty and witchery.
One must have been cursed with a sluggish, half-dead body and a torpid soul, had he not responded to the influences under which our gay party spent the next few hours. Innumerable snow-flakes had carried down from the air every particle of impurity, and left it sweet and wholesome enough to seem the elixir of immortal youth. It was so tempered also, that it only braced and stimulated. The raw, pinching coldness of the previous day was gone. The sun, undimmed by a cloud, shone genially, and eaves facing the south were dripping, the drops falling like glittering gems.
Now and then a breeze would career down upon them, and, catching the light snow from the adjacent fence, would cast it into their faces as a mischievous school-boy might.
"Stop that!" cried Lottie to one of these sportive zephyrs. "De you call that a gust of wind? I declare it was a viewless sprite, or a party of snow elves, playing their mad pranks upon us."
"I prefer fairies less cold and ethereal," said De Forrest, with a meaning look at the speaker.
"What do you prefer, Mr. Hemstead?" she asked. "But where we people of the world speak of fairies, sprites, and nymphs, I suppose you permit yourself to think only of angels."