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But Rosa saw above him, and revealed to him those beautiful inner truths that were to give form and character to his outer life. Yes; Paul had uncongenial brothers and sisters, and his more refined tastes and pursuits would have led him away from them. But Rosa, with her womanly tact, and grace, and lovingness, led him out from the mists of selfishness into the halo of a more genial and beautiful light, and he felt his heart grow warm with an inexpressible love.

“Ah, Rosa,” he said, “there comes over me a new and more beautiful perception of the holy marriage relation; and, like another Adam, I realize that an Eve is created for me from my own breast. My thought grows so living in you, Rosa,–this morning, so unconsciously, was taken from me but a dry rib, and now God grants to me this beautiful Eve! Ah, Rosa, my heart is so full of gratitude for the beautiful gift of your thoughts to me,–I realize so fully that you are a ‘help meet for me.'”

Happy Rosa! She gazed into Paul’s eyes, and caressed him with her soft touches, and said–

“Oh, Paul, Paul! when I look at you, and think that some day you will be an angel of Heaven, and that I will see your glorious, spirit-beauty, my heart is so happy; for then I can feel, dear Paul, that our love stretches far away beyond this world and this life; and if I love you so much here, what will it be when I see you in the beautiful heavenly light?”

Paul smiled.

“Your fancy is dreaming of what I will be; and can you not dream for me of how bright and beautiful my Rosa will be in that heavenly light?”

“Ah, yes,” said Rosa, “that too is pleasant, for I love to be beautiful, dear Paul, for your sake; and today I was thinking of how happy I should make you–not I, but the Lord will make you happy, dear Paul, through me; and is not that a beautiful thought–that it is God loving us through each other?”

How holy love grew at once to Paul! though at first he did not see this beautiful truth as clearly as did Rosa. But she went on, in her loving way, and very soon she raised him into that inner sunshine in which she dwelt, and then he saw it all clearly, for she said–

“You know, dear Paul, that we read in the Bible that ‘God is a sun, and that He is the fountain of life,’ and thus all life flows from Him into us, just as in the tiny flowers upon the earth comes the warm living ray of the material sun, developing in them beautiful colours and odours–so the life-ray from God fills us with warm affections. We are but dead forms–the power and the life is in Him, and if we were cut off from Him, how could we love each other?”

Paul was convinced, and did not fail to make Rosa realize the Heaven-derived life and power that was in him. And as they kneeled together in their evening devotions, and Paul clasped his wife in his arms, how clearly he felt the influence of that Divine sun upon his soul, filling it with a gushing, yearning tenderness for his beloved and beautiful one; and how fervently he prayed that the light might grow in her, and through her descend to him! Beautiful are the prayers of such loving hearts, for the inner door of their existence then opens, and the great King of Glory enters in, and they are in the Lord, and the Lord is in them.

Yes, Paul had found a wife–not an external type or shadow of one to mock and vex his soul with an unsatisfactory pretence, but a most blessed and eternal reality. He was married not only in the sight of men, but before God and the angels. And the heart of Rosa responded to his mind as truly and unfailingly as his heart beat to the breath of his lungs. She was as his inner life, and he felt himself strong to guard and protect her as he would his own existence. She had become one with him, and henceforth there was no separate existence for these two.