Page:Female Prose Writers of America.djvu/454

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412
JULIA C. R. DORR.

should be, if they always beat in perfect unison, and if their thoughts and feelings harmonize as they ought to do, it will be difficult for her to draw aside the veil from her own heart, and lay it open to the gaze of any other being, without, in some degree, betraying the confidence reposed in her by him who should be nearer and dearer than all the world beside. The heart is like a temple, Jessie. It has its outer and its inner court, and it has also its holy of holies. The outer court is full. Common acquaintances,—those that we call friends, merely because they are not enemies,—are gathered there. The inner court but few may enter,—the few who we feel love us, and to whom we are united by the strong bonds of sympathy; but the sanctum sanctorum, the holy of holies, that must never be profaned by alien footsteps, or by the tread of any, save him to whom the wife hath said, ‘Whither thou goest I will go, thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.’”