"'You miserable, good-for-nothing scamp!' said he. 'Why do you seek to lower yourself in the estimation of every man, and bring disgrace on the name and fame of my family, by associating with the poor daughter of a worthless laborer?'
"This fired my brain; but I was timid and dare not speak my thoughts in his presence. I listened. He showered upon me all the evil epithets his tongue could dispense, and, raving like a madman, he pushed me to the door, and told me to cease my visits upon Evelina or leave his house forever and change my name, for he would not shelter me, or own any relationship to me.
"Poor girl! She little thought how much I that night endured for her, or how much I was willing to bear. She was a beautiful being,—so much like my mother, so gentle, and loving, and benevolent! We were one. True, no earthly law recognized us as such; but God's law did,—a law written with his hand on our beating hearts. We had been joined far, far back, ages gone by, when our souls first had their birth,—long ere they became enshrined in earth forms. The church might have passed its ceremonial bond about us, but that would have been mere form—that would have been a union which man might have put asunder, and often does. But of a true union of souls it is useless to say 'what God has joined let no man put asunder;' for he cannot any more than he can annul any other of his great laws.
"My father's reprimands and threatenings could not, therefore, dissolve that bond which united me to Evelina, and she to me. So, as soon as I left his room, I sought her presence. I told her all, and she wept to think of what she had caused, as she said. But I tried to convince her, and succeeded in doing so finally, that it was not she who had caused it. She had not made her soul or its attributes. God had made them, and if they were in unison with mine, or if they had attractions that drew my. soul to hers, the law under which they came together and would not be separated was God's law, and we could not escape it.
"That night we walked down by the river's side, and we talked of those great principles that govern us. We studied, there in the clear moonlight, God's works, and I asked her whether in loving the beautiful and the good we did not love God.
"Her mind opened a bright effulgence of light to my spirit. 'Yes,' said she, 'it is even so. God is a spirit. He fills immensity,—and if so, then he imbues this little flower with his own life, for he is the life of all things. It is as he made it, and as we love it we love him. When we love a being for his goodness, we love God; for that goodness is of God."
"'Yes,' I remarked; 'I see it is so. I do not love you as a material being. It is not your flesh and bones merely that I love, but it is the goodness dwelling in you. As that goodness is more abundant in you than in others, in like degree does God dwell in you more than in them. If, therefore, I love you more than I love them, I love God more than I should did my supreme love find its highest object in them. In loving you, therefore, I love God so far as you possess the characteristics by which we personify that being. It is not wrong, therefore, to love you or the flower; for goodness exists in one, and beauty in the other, and they both are of God, and in loving them we love God.'
"We parted at a late hour. I went with her to the door of the little cottage in which she dwelt with her father. Her mother had died, as they call it, long years before; and, as I kissed her, and pressed her hand and bade her good-by, I felt more strongly than ever a determination to bear any privation, endure any suffering, for her sake.
"I reached my home. I found the doors fastened and all quiet. The moon shone very clear, and it was nearly as light as at noon-day. I tried the windows, and fortunately found one of them unfastened. I raised it very carefully, and crept in, and up to my room. The next morning at breakfast my father spoke not a word, but I knew by his manner that he was aware of my disregard of his command, and I thought that all that prevented him from talking to me was a want of language strong enough to express the passionate feelings that ran riot in his soul.
"I judged rightly. For at night his passion found vent in words, and such a copious torrent of abuse that I shuddered. Nevertheless, I yielded not one position of my heart, and was conscious that I had a strength of purpose that would ever defend the right, and could not be swayed by mere words.