Why should I suppose that, if there be a God, he is
driven out of us by sleep?"
"It is an awful thing," said Polwarth, "to think--that this feeble
individuality of ours, the offspring of God's individuality, should
have some power, and even more will than power, to close its door
against him, and keep house without him!"
"But what sort of a house?" murmured Wingfold.
"Yes, uncle," said Rachel; "but think how he keeps about us,
haunting the doors and windows like the very wind, watching to get
in! And sometimes he makes of himself a tempest, that both doors and
windows fly open, and he enters in fear and dismay."
The prophetic in the uncle was the poetic in the niece.
"For you and me, uncle," she went on, "he made the doors and windows
so rickety that they COULD not keep him out."
"Ye are the temples of the Holy Ghost," said the curate, almost
unconsciously.
"Some of us a little ruinous!" rejoined the girl.
So full was her soul of a lively devotion that she took the
liberties of a child of the house with sacred things.
"But, Mr. Wingfold," she continued. "I must tell you one more
curious thing about my dreams: I NEVER dream of being crooked and
dwarfish. I don't dream that I am straight either; I suppose I feel
all right, and therefore never think about it.
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