our home cravings. Eternity is perfect—all embracing, all reaching, never beginning, and without an end."
"Are there marriages amongst you?" next asked Philip, with a certain timidity, for Adela and her child daughter were with him.
While he paused for the reply so did Adela. The child meanwhile had run a little forward to pluck some flowers.
Hesperia turned and looked at them both calmly for a space, and then said quietly,—
"My husband waits for me in our home to-day. We parted only that I might come for you, yet even then we were not parted. Do you imagine that the breath of the Creator would be perfect if divided? Has the River of Purification not yet opened your eyes? Have you any doubts upon the subject?"
"No," answered Philip, as he turned towards Adela.
"Nor have I," replied Adela, looking at him with eyes in which love, the eternal, glowed.
"Be satisfied then, and ask no more questions," said Hesperia. "Mortals sometimes have, on rare occasions, a foretaste of this eternal union, yet theirs is but the shadow of the reality."
The little maid joined them here with a cluster of white roses in her arms. Her mother meant to have called her Mary, and that was now her name. She now danced before them, happy and unconscious, while they both murmured her name as they clasped hands.
"Mary will find her own mate by and by," murmured Hesperia, as she led them along the covered ways of this dream-like paradise.
