"If there were such an urn as that," he said, pointing to the
naiad's, "ever renewing the water inside it without pipe or spring,
there would be what we call a miracle, because, unable to follow
the appearance farther back, we should cease thought, and wonder
only in the presence of the making God. And such an urn would be a
true picture of the heart of God, ever sending forth life of
itself, and of its own will, into the consciousness of us receiving
the same."
He grew eloquent, and talked as even Joan had never heard him
before. And she understood him, for the lonely desire after life
had wrought, making her capable. She felt more than ever that he
was a messenger to her from a higher region, that he had come to
make it possible for her to live, to enlarge her being, that it
might no more be but the half life of mere desire after something
unknown and never to be attained.
Suddenly, with that inexplicable breach in the chain of association
over which the electric thought seems to leap, as over a mighty
void of spiritual space, Cosmo remembered that he had not yet sent
the woman whose generous trust had saved him from long pangs of
hunger, the price of her loaf. He turned quickly to Joan: was not
this a fresh chance of putting trust in her? What so precious thing
between two lives as faith? It is even a new creation in the midst
of the old. Would he not be wrong to ask it from another? And ask
it he must; for there was the poor woman, on whom he had no claim
of individual, developed friendship, in want of her money! Would he
not feel that Joan wronged him, if she asked some one else for any
help he could give her? He told her therefore the whole story of
his adventures on his way to her, and ending said,
"Lend me a half-sovereign--please--to put in a letter for the first
woman.
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