"Mrs. Amos cannot raise her head. What are you doing?—if I may ask so blunt a question upon so short an acquaintance."
"This is the first time I have been on deck. I was studying the sea, in the first place;—and then something drove me to study the Bible."
"Ah, we are driven to that on every hand," he answered. "Now go on, and tell me the point of your studies, will you?"
There was something in the utmost genial and kind in his look and way; he was not a person from whom one would keep back anything he wanted to know; as also evidently he was not one to ask anything he should not. The request did not even startle Eleanor. She looked thoughtfully over the heaving sea while she answered.
"I had been taking a great new view of the glory of creation—over the ship's side here. Then I had the sorrow to find—or fear—that we have an unbeliever in our captain. From that, I suppose, I took hold of Paul's reasoning—how without excuse people are in unbelief; how the invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; even his eternal power and Godhead. And those glorious last words were what my heart fixed upon."
"'His eternal power and Godhead.'"
Eleanor looked round without speaking; a look full of the human echo to those words; the joy of weakness, the strength of ignorance, the triumph of humility.
"What a grand characterizing Paul gives in those other words," said Mr. Amos—"'the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God.' Unto him be honour and glory forever!"
"And then those other words," said Eleanor low,—"'The eternal God is thy refuge.'"
"That is a good text for us to keep," said Mr. Amos. "But really, with that refuge, I don't see what we should be afraid of."