remains, no matter how moral one's life may be. 'Watch and pray' was not
addressed to the guilty alone, Mr. Siward."

"Oh, yes, of course. As for the balanced capacity for good and evil, how
about the inherited desire for the latter?"

"Who is free from that, too? Do you suppose anybody really desires to be
good?"

"You mean most people are so afraid not to be, that virtue becomes a
habit?"

"Perhaps. It's a plain business proposition anyway. It pays."

"Celestial insurance?" he asked, laughing.

"I don't know, Mr. Siward; do you?"

But he, turning to the sea, had become engrossed in his own thoughts
again; and again she was first curious, then impatient at the ease with
which he excluded her. She remembered, too, that the cart was waiting;
that she had scarcely time now to make the train.

She stood irresolute, inert, disinclined to bestir herself. An inborn
aptitude for drifting, which threatened to become a talent for
indecision, had always alternated in her with sudden impulsive
conclusions; and when her pride was involved, in decisions which
sometimes scarcely withstood the analysis of reason.

Physically healthy, mentally unawakened, sentimentally incredulous,