the stronger the impression produced upon him by a soul unveiling itself in the naivete of genuine emotion.  That all was sincere he could have no doubt.  Gradually he lost his critical attitude, and at moments surprised himself under the influence of a sympathetic instinct.  Then he would lose consciousness of her words for an interval, during which he pondered her face, and was wrought upon by its strange beauty.  The pure and touching spirituality of Maud’s countenance had never been so present to him as now; she was pale with very earnestness, her eyes seemed larger than their wont, there was more than womanly sweetness in the voice which so unconsciously modulated itself to the perfect expression of all she uttered.  Towards the end, he could but yield himself completely to the spell, and, when she ceased, he, like Adam at the end of the angel’s speech, did not at once perceive that her voice was silent.

“It was long,” she said, after telling the outward circumstances of her life with her aunt, “before I came to understand how differently I had been brought up from other children.  Partly I began to see it at the school where we first met; but it only grew quite clear to me when I shared in the home life of my pupils in the country.  I found I had an entirely different view of the world from what was usual.  That which was my evil, I discovered to be often others’ good; and my good, their abhorrence.  My aunt’s system was held to be utterly unchristian.  Little things which I sometimes said, in perfect innocence, excited grave disapproval.  All this frightened me, and made me even more reserved than I should have been naturally.

“In my letters to you I began to venture for the first time to speak of things which were making my life restless.  I did little more than hint my opinions; I wonder, in looking back, that I had the courage to do even that.  But I already knew that your mind was broader and richer than mine, and I suppose I caught with a certain desperation at the chance of being understood.  It was the first opportunity I had ever had of discussing intellectual things.  With my aunt I had never ventured to discuss anything; I reverenced her too much for that; she spoke, and I received all she said.  I thought that from you I should obtain confirmation where I needed it, but your influence was of the opposite kind.  Your letters so abounded with suggestion that was quite new to me, referred so familiarly to beliefs and interests of which I was quite ignorant, showed such a boldness in judging all things, that I drifted further and further from certainty.  The result of it all was that I fell ill.

“You see now what it is that has burdened me from the day when I first began to ask myself about my beliefs.  I was taught to believe that the world was sin, and that the soul only freed itself from sin in proportion as it learned to live apart from and independently of the world.  Everything was dark because of sin; only in the still, secret places of the soul was the light of purity and salvation.