"Is that near enough? Would you be quite content with that? Even when she turns away her face and won't look at you?" The little caviller was silent. "Did you ever see God, Marion?" asked one of the girls. She thought for a moment before giving an answer. "No," she said. "I've seen things just after he had done them; and I think I've heard him speak to me; but I've never seen him yet." "Then you're not good, Marion," said the free-thinker of the group. "No: that's just it. But I hope to be good some day, and then I _shall_ see him." "How do you grow good, Marion?" asked the girl. "God is always trying to make me good," she answered; "and I try not to interfere with him." "But sometimes you forget, don't you?" "Yes, I do." "And what do you do then?" "Then I'm sorry and unhappy, and begin to try again." "And God don't mind much, does he?" "He minds very much until I mind; but after that he forgets it all,--takes all my naughtiness and throws it behind his back, and won't look at it." "That's very good of God," said the reasoner, but with such a self-satisfied air in his approval, that Marion thought it time to stop. She came straight to me, and told me, with a face perfectly radiant, of the alteration in Mr. Morley's behavior to her, and, what was of much more consequence, the evident change that had begun to be wrought in him. I am not prepared to say that he has, as yet, shown a very shining light, but that some change has passed is evident in the whole man of him. I think the eternal wind must now be able to get in through some chink or other which the loss of his child has left behind. And, if the change were not going on, surely he would ere now have returned to his wallowing in the mire of Mammon; for his former fortune is, I understand, all but restored to him. I fancy his growth in goodness might be known and measured by his progress in appreciating Marion. He still regards her as extreme in her notions; but it is curious to see how, as they gradually sink into his understanding, he comes to adopt them as, and even to mistake them for, his own. CHAPTER XXIX. A STRANGE TEXT.