The look that the fair wife flashed up at him from her lovely eyes plainly told him that no company, however pleasant, was quite like his—no group complete to her without him.
Earle stooped and picked up his boy, which had toddled to his side, and gave him a toss on high that made the little fellow clap his hands with delight, and the air rang with his happy, childish laughter.
“Earle, I have been trying to explain to Isabelle your theory of the golden city,” said Editha, when Master Paul had become quiet once more; “but I’ve only made a bungle of it, and you will have to interpret yourself.”
“I presume Mrs. Tressalia would not agree with me in my ideas regarding the revelation,” Earle said, with a smile, as he turned to that lady. “There is so much that seems visionary and mystical in it, that none of us can fully understand or explain it, but whatever lessons we may draw from it can do us no harm. As for the ‘city which lieth foursquare, whose length, breadth, and height are equal,’ it seems to me more like the symbol of a perfected life than like the description of a literal city.”
“I had never thought of it in that light before,” Mrs. Tressalia said, thoughtfully.
“If we make the height and breath of our life equal with its length, it cannot fail to be perfect and of faultless symmetry, can it?” asked the young marquis.
“What constitutes the height and breadth of a life as you express it?” Mrs. Tressalia queried.
“The height,” Earle replied, his eyes resting earnestly on the far-off purple and crimson clouds of the western sky, as if beyond them he could almost distinguish that golden symbol of which he was speaking—“the height is attained only by a continued reaching upward of the finite for the infinite; the breadth, by the constant practice of that divine charity or love and self-denial as taught by the Man of Sorrows while He dwelt on earth—at least, this is my idea of it. This aspiration after holiness, this daily practice of the divine commands, if followed as long as one lives, cannot fail to make his being one of faultless symmetry in the end, and fit to be measured by the ‘golden reed of the angel.’”
“Yours is a beautiful theory,” Mrs. Tressalia said, a mist gathering in her soft eyes; “and yet, after all, I do not feel that I can quite agree with you. I have always believed that chapter of revelation describes the heavenly city in which we are to dwell when we leave this earth. It is a more tangible idea to me, and I think I like it better than your theory on that account.”
“You believe in the literal city, pure and holy; I in a state or existence of a like nature. Whichever is the correct belief, it cannot fail of attaining one and the same result—eternal happiness,” Earle said, with his rare smile.