“I do not know how to apologize,” I said, struggling with my emotion, “for the way in which I spoke to you just now. Why should you not be here? Why, indeed? Why am I here? Why”-- “Dear Miss Mary,” cried the girl, interrupting me passionately, “but for you it might never have been as it is. Or never for ages--I cannot say. I might have been a ghost, bound yet to the hated ghost of the old life. It was your doing, at the first--down there--all those years ago. Miss Mary, you were the first person I ever loved. You didn’t know it. I had no idea of telling you. But I did, I loved you. After you went away, I loved you; ever since then, I loved you. I said, I will be fit to love her before I die. And then I said, I will go where she is going, for I shall never get at her anywhere else. And when I entered this place--for I had no friend or relative here that I knew, to meet me--I was more frightened than it is possible for any one like you to understand, and wondered what place there could be for one like me in all this country, and how I could ever get accustomed to their ways, and whether I should shock and grieve them--you _can’t_ understand _that_; I dreaded it so, I was afraid I should swear after I got to Heaven; I was afraid I might say some evil word, and shame them all, and shame myself more than I could ever get over. I knew I wasn’t educated for any such society. I knew there wasn’t anything in me that would be at home here, but just”-- “But just what, Marie?” I asked, with a humility deeper than I could have expressed. “But just my love for you, Miss Mary. That was all. I had nothing to come to Heaven on, but loving you and meaning to be a better girl because I loved you. That was truly all.” “That is impossible!” I said quickly. “Your love for me never brought you here of itself alone. You are mistaken about this. It is neither Christianity nor philosophy.” “There is no mistake,” persisted the girl, with gentle obstinacy, smiling delightedly at my dogmatism, “I came here because I loved you. Do you not see? In loving you, I loved--for the first time in my life I loved--goodness. I really did. And when I got to this place, I found out that goodness was the same as God. And I had been getting the love of God into my heart, all that time, in that strange way, and never knew how it was with me, until--Oh, Miss Mary, who do you think it was, WHO, that met me within an hour after I died?”