"Thank God, thank God!" said she, dropping upon her knees beside him, and with a smile of ecstasy he gathered that fair head to his bosom. The Doctor, hearing her sobs, came softly in. The son's smile, as he met his father's inquiring look, was more than ever like the smile of Rachel. He has been telling the poor girl of her mother's death, thinks the old gentleman; yet the Doctor wonders that he could have kept so radiant a face with such a story. Of these things, however, Reuben goes on presently to speak: of his first sight of the mother of Adele, and of her devotional attitude as they floated down past the little chapel of Notre Dame to enter upon the fateful voyage; he recounts their talks upon the tranquil moon-lit nights of ocean; he tells of the mother's eager listening to his description of her child. "I did not tell her the half, Adele; yet she loved me for what I told her." And Adele smiles through her tears. At last he comes to those dismal scenes of the wreck, relating all with a strange vividness; living over again, as it were, that fearful episode, till his brain whirled, his self-possession was lost, and he broke out into a torrent of delirious raving. He sleeps brokenly that night, and the next day is feebler than ever. The physician warns against any causes of excitement. He is calm only at intervals. The old school-days seem present to him again; he talks of his fight with Phil Elderkin as if it happened yesterday. "Yet I like Phil," he says (to himself), "and Rose is like Amanda, the divine Amanda. No--not she. I've forgotten: it's the French girl. She's a ---- Pah! who cares? She's as pure as heaven; she's an angel. Adele! Adele! Not good enough! I'm not good enough. Very well, very well, now I'll be bad enough! Clouds, wrangles, doubts! Is it my fault? _AEdificabo meam Ecclesiam._ How they kneel! Puppets! mummers! No, not mummers, they see a Christ. What if they see it in a picture? You see him in words. Both in earnest. Belief--belief! That is best. Adele, Adele, I believe!" The Doctor is a pained listener of this incoherent talk of his son. "I am afraid,--I am afraid," he murmurs to himself, "that he has no clear views of the great scheme of the Atonement." The next day Reuben is himself once more, but feeble, to a degree that startles the household. It is a charming morning of later September; the window is wide open, and the sick one looks out over a stretch of orchard (he knew its every tree), and upon wooded hills beyond (he knew every coppice and thicket), and upon a background of sky over which a few dappled white clouds floated at rest. "It is most beautiful!" said Reuben. "All things that He has made are beautiful," said the Doctor; and thereupon he seeks to explore his way into the secrets of Reuben's religious experience,--employing, as he was wont to do, all the Westminster formulas by which his own belief stood fast. "Father, father, the words are stumbling-blocks to me," says the son.