There is completeness somewhere-in the land beyond-where the sighs, the tears, the passionate longings, the hopes and fears will be all adjusted, and our souls rest in celestial harmony.
We cannot question but that it will be well with us there, if we have striven for the good, our souls conceived of, here. If, with good purpose and intent, we have out-wrought the hints and suggestions which have been given us of life, we must find growing states of rest, sometime, to repletion. It will not be all peace there; for the two worlds are interblended, and shadow into each other. There is an interplay of life and emotion forever, and to those who sense it, a joy too deep to be portrayed by human words; a truth which helps us to bear the sorrows of this life serenely, and more fully appreciate its joys.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Basil and his sister sat longer that summer evening than was their wont. There was a deeper intoning of sentiment, a closer blending of thought, or rather, their individual states had been more clearly defined by the day's incidents.
They were of those rare types of mind which know just how far they can be together, and not detract from each other; just when the mental and spiritual assimilation was becoming attenuated, and each needed solitude. Thus they were constantly coming each to the other, and consequently drew from exhaustless fountains of intellectual and physical strength.
Life is replete with harmonies ready to inflow, if we are but receptive and delicate enough to receive and appropriate them. Blest are they who recognize life's indications, its index-fingers which are pointing each hour to some new experience, which will deepen and expand our lives.
Generally there is great danger of two persons settling into themselves, as these two seemed to have done, but Basil and Beatrice were so catholic they could afford it, in fact they needed just the close companionship which they held. The brother, with his colossal spirit, lofty and original, moving forward through life with that slow majesty which indicates the wholeness of the individual, unlike the airy advance of natures which rush with but one faculty quickened, and mistake speed for greatness, supplied the sister with that manly, noble quality, which must ever exist in the real or ideal of every woman. No wonder her warm, beneficent nature expanded daily, until her heart seemed a garden full of flowers of love and gratitude.
Did life at times seem dim and hazy, and the mind full of a thousand doubts, he could dispel the cloud, wrench the truth from its old combinations, and present it to her in striking contrast with its opposite error.