Transition; A Novel - nouveau livre

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. Honora sat more upright and looked at her father wonderingly. " It is well, Honora," he began, " that, now you have returned to me a beautiful and completed instrument, I should make a confidence to you of the spiritual experience through which God has led me during the last few years of my life. In mercy to my incapacity, this surpassing revelation has come to me slowly. You apprehend me, my daughter ?" " Yes, father; of course," said Honora, who thought no nut too hard for her intellectual teeth to crack. " I am the more led to speak with you now and openly that I recall with extraordinary vividness my own return from that Alma Mater whose memory I cherish to the day of my death. Little did I dream, Honora, when God gave me a daughter instead of the desired son, and then took my beloved wife your mother from me, that he gave me the two gifts in one, and that I should live to see a day like this. For in my youth and middle age the estate of woman was not as now." Honora smiled. " Vera incessu patuit Dea," continued the rector, " and we who were young then knew not of this appearance upon our earth of a woman transformed, in so far as being mentally equipped as man and yet retaining herinimitable tenderness and grace. That is also a great gift, and to me a special mercy. Shall I record my experiences, my daughter ?" " Pray do, father," said Honora, with a somewhat shrinking manner. "It was," continued the rector, "at the University that my own spiritual birth took place, and therefore your return from the University seems a fitting occasion for this confidence. I had indeed a mind already consecrated to the service of God and His church, but it was under the influence of the wonderful re-awakening of spirituality in the church, which has been de...