Yet over the whole there hung a light, misty haze of sunshine and vapor commingled, not uncommon on an English afternoon, and not unlike the dim, magnifying fog which shrouds from the eager eye the transition from the present to the future.
"How richly the sunshine streams down the street upon that old carved cross and the straw-strewn market-place!" said Ralph.
"All the more bright because we see not whence it comes," replied Hortensia; "and the warmer--to the eye, at least--for passing through an atmosphere grosser than that from which it issues. What is it most like, Ralph--like woman's love, or Heaven's bounty, or the rays of Hope, that stream between the close dwellings of man's earthly aspirations, gilding the straws upon his onward way, and making the stones on his path shine like jewels?"
"Like woman's love, methinks," said Ralph, "because, as you say, it pours from sources we do not see, brightens the dimmer air that it pervades, and often lends a luster to worthless objects, which shine in its light alone."
"True," said the lady, with a sigh; "but see, it catches on the cross upon the steeple-top, and makes it shine as if with fire."
"It will rest there longest," replied her companion; "shining after all is dark below."
"Even so," said the lady, retiring from the window; "I love the shaded light of a quiet room better than the wide, garish sunshine abroad. Come, let us talk of other days, when you and I were boy and girl, and knew not of each other's being, and chased butterflies, and sought to catch the rainbow, and did all that the common bond of nature uses to link withal the human hearts through the wide world in one community of universal sympathy in early years. Tell me, Ralph Woodhall, why is it that all mankind, thus one in happy youth, should part so widely in maturer years--part in feeling and in thought, in conduct and in course, in object and in means?"
"Because," replied Ralph, "at least so I suppose, infancy is one general starting-point from which all the roads diverge, leading further and further asunder."
"Till all guide us to the great precipice which surrounds our arena on every side," said the lady, "and we take the leap from points wide apart. But we are getting dull, Mr. Woodhall. Do you remember your mother?"
"But faintly," replied Ralph, "yet brightly too, though it may seem a contradiction. The long look back through life is to me like the prospect down that street, where there are many long, shadowy spaces in which I can see nothing clearly, while every here and there comes a bright gleam of light, displaying every thing as vividly as in mid-day."