“No; but we all have the compass and chart to guide us, and mostly find a pilot, if the passage is very shoal, and the rocks are intricate, and the navigation too puzzling for us; and there are light-houses, and buoys too, to direct us right. Do you understand me?”
“I think I do; but although I hear of rules, and discipline, and self-control, when I go to church, and have been taught to reverence the Holy Word, and believe in the existence of conscience, theoretically, practically it is all nothing to me. I do not understand it. I dare say I ought not to say this to you. It seems strange to confess all this; only you led to the subject, and I can see that what is all a mist and unsubstantial phantasmagoria to me, is a light and comfort, and real guiding force, and existing present support, to such as you and Hilary.”
“And to you also, if you choose, Miss Barham.”
“Oh, no! never to me; I am too weak to lay hold of them, too foolish to understand them. Life in itself frightens me. It has claims to which I ought to attend; but if I try, a whole host of ceremonies, fashions, customs, prejudices, follies, rise up between me and my duties; I stretch out my hand, and can not reach it, and spend my time in sighing and idle wishes.”
“And I am not theologian or philosopher enough to know what advice to give you. I think, however, I understand your feeling. I wish I could help you.”
“I was brought up,” continued Dora, “to value nothing but what contributed to outward show; to consider only appearances; to act only for effect; I feel the whole root and source of my actions is false; I despise myself, but I do not know how to mend it. I have waked up to a sense that there ought to be reality in life, but know not how to find or make it.”
“Take one duty at a time, and conquer that; give yourself one good rule, and act upon it; do not look at every thing at
once, or you are bewildered by what is before you. One takes the problems of Euclid, one by one, and learns them all; without a gradual advance, or beginning at the simplest, how could we get on?”
“If I only had some one to guide and teach me always; some one like Hilary, who could keep me right,” sighed Dora. Sybil just then joined them, and their conversation was ended for the time; but Dora, when Maurice wished her good-night at parting, whispered: “I shall try to remember;” and his answer was an enthusiastic “I shall never forget.”