“How the earth draws it in!” said the nun dreamily. “It never wastes the beauties of the sky. It hoards them up, and gives them out long after in marbles and precious stones. Did it ever occur to you to wonder how those bright things could grow in the dark underground? I used to think of it in Italy, where I first saw what marbles can be. I remember my eyes and my mind wandering to that as I knelt before the Confession of S. Matthew the Evangelist, in Santa Maria Maggiore, where the walls of the atrium glow with marbles; and the lesson I learned from it was this: that even though pains and sorrows of every kind should intervene between us and the joy of life as thickly as the clay, and rock, and turf had intervened between the sunshine of heaven and the dark place where those marbles took form and color, we could yet, if we had real faith, be conscious of all the glory and joy taking place overhead, and reproduce them for ourselves down in the dark, and make that beauty more enduring because we were in the dark. At the sunny surface, the brightness slips off and shadows succeed; but that solid jewel in the depths is indestructible. My dear”—she turned to her companion with a soft suddenness which warmed but did not startle—“do you remember S. Paul’s recommendation, ‘always rejoice’? It is possible. And now tell me why you do not.” Her eyes, beaming with religious enthusiasm and tenderest human affection, searched frankly the pale face before her, and her hand was laid lightly on Miss Pembroke’s arm. No reserve nor timidity could stand before her. They melted like snowflakes beneath the heavenly summer of her glances. Honora told freely and simply what had distressed her. How sweet is the friendship of one true woman for another!—sweeter than love, for it is untroubled, and has something of the calmness of heaven; deeper than love, for it is the sympathy of true natures which reflect each the entire being of the other; less selfish than love, for it asks no merging of another into itself; nobler than love, for it allows its object to have other sources of happiness than those it can furnish; more enduring than love, for it is a life, and not a flame. “But can you not see, my dear,” the nun said presently, “that it would have been better if you had not had any friendly intercourse with him, even though this terrible thing had never happened? The injunction not to be unequally yoked with one another refers, I think, to all ties as well as to marriage. The gulf is too wide between the Christian and the Jew to be bridged over for familiar friendship. It is too wide for anything but prayers to cross. Once admit any intercourse with unbelievers, and you peril your faith; and, besides, you cannot set a barrier firmly anywhere when the first one is down. I have heard it said that this Jew loved you, and even fancied it possible that you would marry him.” “People ought not to say such things!” exclaimed Miss Pembroke, blushing deeply.