✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ “No. I have never read Chateaubriand’s _Genie du Christianisme_, and,” added he, with an admiring glance, “I am glad of it; for otherwise I should not have heard your brilliant version of what he says. I am afraid, however, that, well as he puts it, I am hardly frank enough to admit that parts of the Old Testament are superior, as mere literature, to everything that the Greeks have left us. The truth is, however, that I know so little of the Old Testament that I have no right to an opinion; but this little book,” continued he, holding it up, “I know by heart. I mean the gospels,” he added, quickly; “and I don’t hesitate to say that in all literature you shall not find such a gem.” The gospels a gem of literature! A weight seemed to press on Mary’s heart. “Listen!” And he opened the book, and turning a few pages with nervous eagerness, found a passage. “Listen! Could anything be more beautiful?” His lips parted; but, without reading a word, he closed the volume upon his forefinger. “Pardon me; but do you know, I fear you can hardly have more than a suspicion of how divinely beautiful this little book really is?” She looked up, puzzled. “You have heard it read, week after week, it is true, but read with a saintly snivel,—a holy whine.” Mary would have protested, but a certain dark flash of bitter disdain that accompanied these words checked her; and she was silent. “Let me read you,” said he, after a pause, “a few of my favorite passages, in the voice of a mere man.” He read and commented, commented and read, for perhaps an hour; commented without rhetoric, read without art. He merely gave himself up to that wondrous story. And what an hour for Mary! For weeks she had longed to know what he thought upon the one great subject which overshadowed all others in her mind. Yes, overshadowed,—for hers was not a blithe spirit. Had longed to know, yet feared to ask. And now that he had been reading and talking so long, did he—as she had so often and so fervently prayed that he should—did he think as she did? Alas, it was but too clear that he did not! But what did he think? That she could not tell, so strange and bewildering were the flashes that came from his words. Her Virginia theology gave her no clue. As though a mariner bore down upon a coast not to be found upon his chart: the lights are there, but have no meaning for him. Equally bewildered was Mary. How did he regard the central figure of that wondrous drama? As he read and talked and talked and read, a will-o’-the-wisp danced before her eyes, leading her here, there, everywhere, but not to be seized! How tender his voice now! borrowing pathos not from art, but from the narrative itself. A voice full of tears. And do not his eyes answer the fading sunlight with a dewy shimmer?