'Surely! "For we know that He hath prepared for us a city."' 'Now you mean heaven,' said Pauline impetuously. 'To me heaven is enveloped in fog.' 'It will not be, dear child, when the mists have rolled away, and in the clear light of the Sun of Righteousness you look across to the other shore.' 'Couldn't you tell me what it is like, my lady? You seem to know. I can't fathom it, and everything looks so dark.' Tryphosa lifted a plain little book from a revolving bookcase of morocco-bound treasures, which stood within easy reach. 'I believe I will let Miss Warner answer you. "Would you like a heaven so small, so human, that mortal words could line it out, and mortal wishes be its boundary? The things we look for are prepared by One whose thoughts are as far above our thoughts as the broad starlit heaven is above this little gaslit earth. And do you think that people are to be all massed in heaven, losing their various identities, their differing tastes, their separate natures? Going from this lower world so full of its adaptations, where colour and form take on a thousand changes, and life and pursuit can be varied almost at will, to a mere dead level of perfect felicity? To leave earth where no two things are alike, and go to heaven to find no two different! The Lord's preparations mean more than that. We should learn better from this lower world. No one pair of black eyes is just like another, no two leaves upon the same tree. And not a yellow blossom can spring up by the wayside, without a red or a white one at hand for contrast. Are the clouds copies of each other? Are the shadows on the hills ever twice the same? Take for your comfort the full assurance that the very Tree of Life--which in Eden seems to have borne but one manner of fruit--in heaven shall bear twelve. But we cannot imagine it--in its fulness. We must look, not to see clear outlines and distinct colours, but only the flood of heavenly light. From point to point the promises pass on, with their golden touch; until the vacant places in our lives disappear, and the aches die out, and desire and longing are lost in 'more than heart could wish.'"' A pause fell then, and a stillness, broken only by the plashing of a little fountain, whose drops fell among the flowers. As they rose to go, Tryphosa drew Pauline's face down until it touched her own. 'Dear child, won't you claim your birthright?' 'I will, my lady.' _Chapter VI_ GIVING ONESELF