Notwithstanding Ghita blushed as she now listened, she did not smile; she rather appeared sad.

For near a minute she made no reply; and when she did answer, it was in a low voice, like one who felt and thought intensely.
"Those stars may well have a higher office," she said.

"Look at them, Raoul;--count them we cannot, for they seem to start out of the depths of heaven, one after another, as the eye rests upon the space, until they mock our efforts at calculation.

We see they are there in thousands, and may well believe they are in myriads.

Now thou hast been taught, else couldst thou never be a navigator, that those stars are worlds like our own, or suns with worlds sailing around them; how is it possible to see and know this without believing in a God and feeling the insignificance of our being ?" "I do not deny that there is a power to govern all this, Ghita--but I maintain that it is a principle; not a being, in our shape and form; and that it is the reason of things, rather than a deity." "Who has said that God is a being in our shape and form, Raoul?
None know that--- none _can_ know it; none _say_ it who reverence and worship him as they ought!" "Do not your priests say that man has been created in his image?
and is not this creating him in his form and likeness ?" "Nay, not so, dear Raoul, but in the image of his spirit--that man hath a soul which partakes, though in a small degree, of the imperishable essence of God; and thus far doth he exist in his image.