Awhile ago, she would have answered confidently, "With Art." Now, she knew better. For two years she had been testing Art's capacity to fill and satisfy an empty human heart, and her soul was exceeding bitter with the unexpected result. She had painfully experienced the truth (though she could hardly be said to understand it as yet) that he who embraces Art with a thought of self and not of service, will find it turn to ice or to ashes in his arms. In itself, it has neither balm for affliction, nor skilful surgery for remorse, nor sunshine to throw athwart the black gloom of despair. Out of this bitter knowledge Miss Thane finally spoke, apparently recurring in thought to their previous talk on the piazza;-- "Mr. Arling, how is one to love God, if one does not?" It was perhaps the most difficult of all questions to answer. How are the blind eyes to be opened, and the deaf ears unstopped? How is the frozen heart to be softened, and the slumbering affection to be wakened into leaf and bloom? How is the Father to be made acceptable to the children that are insensible of His goodness, and will none of His reproof? And how is the Saviour to be presented unto those to whom He has hitherto been without form or comeliness, in such beauty as that they shall desire Him? "I think, where it is not spontaneous," Bergan answered, after a moment's consideration, "that such love is most surely to be attained through prayer and service;--a frequent lifting up of the heart to Him whom it would fain love; a constant endeavor to do His will, as the best means of developing and manifesting love." Miss Thane looked down thoughtfully. "I have known--a man,"--she began slowly, with a shade of irrepressible sadness in her tone,--"a man not less gifted with talent and intellectual power than yourself, and with a somewhat longer and more varied experience in the use of his gifts, who would have laughed at the idea of any virtue in prayer, except as affording a pleasant illusion to a weak mind." "I, too, have known such a man," replied Bergan, the image of Doctor Remy rising irresistibly before his mind, and causing a dull ache in his heart; "but was he--was this man of whom you speak--or had he ever been, in the devout, habitual use of prayer?" She shook her head. "I do not know; probably not." "Miss Thane, you would scarcely need to have me warn you that no man is to be accepted as authority, in law or medicine, who is not thoroughly conversant with the subject, both by study and practice. So those, and those only, who pray themselves, humbly, devoutly, persistently, have any right to pronounce upon the efficacy of prayer." She looked up at him quickly and keenly. "Pardon me, but--have you the right to speak with authority?"