It might be the flower of a gracious friendship only a joining of hands in work for the kingdom-building; she did not let herself go farther than this. But it was a friendship across which there lay no bar and somehow, while she put from herself the thought that it might ever be so promised to her as to be hers of all the world and to the world's exclusion,--while she resented in herself that foolish girl's blush, and resolved that it should never come again,--she sat here to-night thinking how grand and perfect a thing for a woman a grand man's friendship is; how it is different from any, the most pure and sweet, of woman-tenderness; how the crossing of her path with such a path as Christopher Kirkbright's, if it were only once a day, or once a week, or once a month, would be a thing to reckon joy and courage from; to live on from, as she lived on from her prayers. An hour had come in her life which gathered about her realities of heaven, whether the earthly correspondence should concur, or no. A noble influence which had met and moved her, seemed to come and abide about her,--a thought-presence. And a thought-presence was precisely what it was. A thousand circumstances may stretch that hyphen which at once links and separates the sign-syllables of the wonderful fact; an impossibility, of physical conditions, may be between; but the fact subsists--and in rare moments we know it--when that which belongs to us comes invisibly and takes us to itself; when we feel the footsteps afar off which may or may not be feet of the flesh turned toward us. Yet even this conjunction does happen, now and again; the will--the blessed purpose--is accomplished at once on earth and in heaven. When many minutes after the city bells had ceased to sound for nine o'clock, the bell of her own door rang with a clear, strong stroke, Desire Ledwith thought instantly of Mr. Kirkbright with a singular recall,--that was less a change than a transfer of the same perception,--from the inward to the actual. She had no reason to suppose it,--no ordinary reason why,--but she was suddenly persuaded that the friend who in the last hour had stood spiritually beside her, stood now, in reality, upon her door-stone. She did not even wonder for what he could have come. She did not move from her chair; she did not lift her crossed hands from off her open book. She did not break the external conditions in which unseen forces had been acting. If she had moved,--pushed back her chair,--put by her book,--it would have begun to seem strange, she would have been back in a bond of circumstance which would have embarrassed her; she would have been receiving an evening call at an unusual hour. But to have the verity come in and fill the dream,--this was not strange. And yet Christopher Kirkbright had scarcely been in that house ten times before.