When at last he said, "You must go now, dear, and get to bed, as we shall have a long day’s travelling to-morrow," she came and climbed on to his knee, and resting her head on his shoulder, said-- "Is it not lovely to think that we are going now to be together? It is good of you to take me; I hope I shall not be much trouble." "I don’t think so, dear," he answered; "you might perhaps have been a trouble once, but now it is different." "Yes," she said, "I’m nearly grown up, am I not?" He kissed her, and as she tripped off he said to me, laughing, "Well, what do you think of my nearly grown-up companion?" "She is a sweet child," I said. "How did she come to be called Vera? And when are you going to introduce me to Lady Vancome?" "So you don’t even yet understand," he said, "the mystery? Listen while I explain. When Vera Vancome had lived with the children whom she had gathered round her for three years, her whole nature became changed. The new interest, the new love which grew up in her heart for the motherless little ones drove out of her nature the desire for self-gratification which heretofore had been her curse; yet habit is so strong, moulding as it does the brain and warping the will, that as long as the body lives, any tendency to an evil that has once been encouraged will continue, though perhaps with weakened force; and until the spirit is set free by death from these self-made bonds; love, which should be a spontaneous pleasure, is still at times marred by effort, and loses thereby much of its usefulness and beauty. When this is the case it becomes necessary for the soul’s final perfection on earth that it should be born again into the body of a little child, which takes the form of the ennobled spirit. Thenceforth it is free from the tendency to evil which the influence of past years had engraved on its former body and mind. In other words, when a soul outgrows its body, it is time to cast off the old shell and take one more in conformity with a higher development. This may seem a strange thing to you, but it is a common experience of daily life, and accounts both for the inequality of human nature and also for the reason why we find but a small proportion of men or women seemingly fitted for a high state of spiritual life. We see many in the various transition stages, but few who have reached a final growth; the sixth form, as it were, of our earthly school, when the scholars are ready to go forth into a wider universe of action and experience.