It was not a common thing with Adam Warner to be thus eloquent.
Usually silent and absorbed, it was not his gift to moralize or
declaim. His soul must be deeply moved before the profound and buried
sentiment within it could escape into words.

Sibyll pressed her father's hand, and, though her own heart was very
heavy, she forced her lips to smile and her voice to soothe. Adam
interrupted her.

"Child, child, ye women know not what presses darkest and most
bitterly on the minds of men. You know not what it is to form out of
immaterial things some abstract but glorious object,--to worship, to
serve it, to sacrifice to it, as on an altar, youth, health, hope,
life,--and suddenly in old age to see that the idol was a phantom, a
mockery, a shadow laughing us to scorn, because we have sought to
clasp it."

"Oh, yes, Father, women have known that illusion."

"What! Do they study?"

"No, Father, but they feel!"

"Feel! I comprehend thee not."

"As man's genius to him is woman's heart to her," answered Sibyll, her
dark and deep eyes suffused with tears. "Doth not the heart create,
invent? Doth it not dream? Doth it not form its idol out of air?
Goeth it not forth into the future, to prophesy to itself? And sooner