However I resolved to ask him, and was very anxious that he should
grant my request. The day dawned bright and clear, one of those hopeful
days with promise of the coming summer in the clear shining of the
February sun. At breakfast Mr. Winthrop spoke of the rare loveliness of
the morning; the blue of the sky, soft and tender as a mother's eye, with
here and there a fleecy cloud such as painters love to put on their
canvas. Away to the south, the sea was dimpling and sparkling in ten
thousand broken ripples, with here and there a brave vessel sailing away
over the cold, heaving waters.
Mr. Winthrop seemed in more genial mood than he had been for a week; and
when he left the table I followed him to the door, where he stood gazing
with eyes trained to take in intelligently the charming scene. I stood
silent, entering in a very half-hearted manner into his keen enjoyment
of the picture painted by God's own hand, spread out before us.
"It is no use for a man to attempt copying that living, throbbing scene,
nor yet to describe it," he said, with an air of dissatisfaction.
"To copy would be easy, compared with creating it," I suggested timidly.
"Yes; but when, and by whom done? That is the question that maddens one,"
he answered after a long pause.
"The Bible says the same hand that was nailed to the cross on Calvary
created it. 'By whom also the worlds were made,'" I murmured.
"Ah, if we only had some evidence of that; but it is all dark, dark, on
the other side of death, and on the other side of life too.
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