Nothing is so deceptive as
human reasoning,--nothing so slippery and reversible as what we have
decided to call 'logic.' The truest compass of life is spiritual
instinct."
"And what of those who have no spiritual instinct?" demanded
Vergniaud.
"I do not think there are any such. To us it certainly often seems
as if there were masses of human beings whose sole idea of living is
to gratify their bodily needs,--but I fancy it is only because we do
not know them sufficiently that we judge them thus. Few, if any, are
so utterly materialistic as never to have had some fleeting
intuition of the Higher existence. They may lack the force to
comprehend it, or to follow its teaching,--but in my opinion, the
Divine is revealed to all men once at least in their lives."
They had by this time passed out of the drawing-room, and now,
ascending three steps, they went through a curtained recess into
Angela Sovrani's studio,--a large and lofty apartment made beautiful
by the picturesque disorder and charm common to a great artist's
surroundings. Here, at a grand piano sat Angela herself, her song
finished, her white hands straying idly over the keys,--and near her
stood the gentleman whom the Abbe Vergniaud had called "a terrible
reformer and Socialist" and who was generally admitted to be
something of a remarkable character in Europe.
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