For this girl, who spent
her days behind a counter, was one of the spiritual forces at
work for the conservation and recovery of the universe.
Not only had Hesper Mortimer never had a friend worthy of the
name, but no idea of pure friendship had as yet been generated in
her. Sepia was the nearest to her intimacy: how far friendship
could have place between two such I need not inquire; but in her
fits of misery Hesper had no other to go to. Those fits, alas!
grew less and less frequent; for Hesper was on the downward
incline; but, when the next came, after this interview, she found
herself haunted, at a little distance, as it were, by a strange
sense of dumb, invisible tending. It did not once come close to
her; it did not once offer her the smallest positive consolation;
the thing was only this, that the essence of Mary's being was so
purely ministration, that her form could not recur to any memory
without bringing with it a dreamy sense of help. Most powerful of
all powers in its holy insinuation is _being_. _To be_ is more
powerful than even _to do_. Action _may_ be hypocrisy,
but being is the thing itself, and is the parent of action. Had
anything that Mary said recurred to Hesper, she would have
thought of it only as the poor sentimentality of a low education.
But Hesper did not think of Mary's position as low; that would
have been to measure it; and it did not once suggest itself as
having any relation to any life in which she was interested.
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