"Belief is nothing," she rejoined, after a pause, "action is the test. Do you live your belief?"
Bergan drew a deep breath. "I try to do so, Miss Thane."
She went on, seemingly so intent upon her own train of thought as to be utterly unmindful of the solemn and searching nature of the questions that she was putting;—
"You feel, then, this all-satisfying love of God in your heart?"
"In some measure, I trust I do."
"And when the sun suddenly dropped, or faded, out of your sky, and the past became a corpse, and the present a burden, and the future a blank, what comfort did it give you?"
"The comfort of knowing that all things work together for the good of those that love God," responded Bergan, not without a momentary wonder at the curious appositeness of the question to his recent experiences, but quickly divining that she was looking more into her own heart than his, in asking it.
"Good," she repeated, musingly; "you did not say, happiness."
"Good is a better word than happiness, in this world. In the world to come, they will be synonyms."
She gave him another long, penetrating look. Then she said, quite simply, and evidently with no thought or intention of paying him compliments;—"You have talents, you have culture, you have a clear and powerful intellect (I heard Judge Emly begin an argument with you just now, and you soon cut the very ground from under his feet), you have been wonderfully successful, too, considering your years,—yet you do not hesitate to bind yourself to these narrow theories."