Why was there so much, and most of all in himself, for which, as Richard was beginning to understand, even a Barbara could not suffice? Why also did her sufficiency depend so much on her faith in an all-sufficient? And why was there so often such a gulf betwixt the two that seemed made for each other? Ah! they were made for each other only in the general! For the individual, Nature did not care; she had no time! Then how was it that he cared for Nature? If Nature meant anything, was an intelligence, a sort of God, why should he, the individual, who loved as an individual, was a blessing or curse to himself as an individual--why should he care anything for one who loved only in the general? Could a man love in general? Yes; he himself loved his kind and sought to deliver them from superstition. But that was because he could think of them as a multitude of individuals. If he had never loved father, mother, or friend, would he have loved in the general? Would crowds of men and women have _awaked_ love in him? If so, then the bigger crowd must always move the greater love! No; it is from the individual we go to the many. Love that was only in the general, that cared for the nation, the race, and let the individual perish, could not be love. He would be no God who cared only for a world or a race. The live conscious individual man could not love or worship him! And if no individual worshipped, where would be the worship of the crowd? Still less could a vague creator of masses, that knew nothing of individuals, being himself not individual, be worthy to be called God! Demon be might be--never God! But if God were a person, an individual, and so loved the individual!--ah, then indeed!--Barbara believed that such a God lived all about and in us! Mr. Wingfold said he was too great to prove, too near to see, but the greater and the nearer, the more fit to be loved! There were things against it! Nature herself seemed against it, for, lovely us she was, she did awful things! Could Nature have come from one source, and God be another source from which came man? He was too near Nature, too much at home with her, to believe it. Could it be one Nature that made all the lovely things, and another Nature that decreed their fate? That also he could not believe: they and their fate must be from one hand, or heart, or will! He could but hope there might be some way of reconciling the terrible dissonance between Nature and Barbara's God! If there was such a way, if their contradiction was only in seeming, then the very depth of their unity might be the cause of their seeming discord! Something in this way the mind of Richard felt and thought and saw and doubted and speculated. Then he would turn to the ancient story--still because “Barbara said.”