"We can’t always be young, dear Jack," she said, with her eyes full of pain. "I always think the most obvious compensation of old age is its inability to feel, as we younger people do. The blows which fall on old people scarcely seem to shake their serenity. But they shatter us. Oh yes, it must be nice to be old. Your parents are marvellous considering all they have gone through. And, you see, you were their life, their all, and they won’t let themselves be happy in your peace. Oh, my dear boy, don’t look like that; things will come right in time—at least that’s what I’m always telling other people," she added, faltering a little. Cummings walked up and down the room for a moment or two before answering. "_Pone, Domini, custodian ori meo...._ Yes, we say those things to others, but they don’t always convince us. There are times when horrible spiritual dryness grips you, and you grope for days and weeks in absolute darkness, knowing that you yourself have raised the veil between you and the light." "Sacrifice and death—somebody said those were the only terms on which the God of life has made life to exist," said Evelyn softly. "The French talk of the soul’s secret garden as though it were a place of promise and perfume. I always think one’s secret garden is Gethsemane. And sweat broke out even on Christ’s brow in Gethsemane, you know. ’All bound together with one chain of darkness, and to themselves more grievous than the darkness.’" "But the saints had a very great light," said Cummings. He shook his head back with a characteristic little gesture of decision. "Do you know what it is, Evelyn, suddenly, for no reason, when you are saying the same prayers in the same way, kneeling on the same step, practising the same austerities, whatever they may be, neither more nor less, to have your hardness break down and your heart like a little child’s again? That has come before; it will, it must, come again." Evelyn sighed wearily. "It seems to me that sometimes one believes with one’s heart and sometimes with one’s head. I suppose the best of all is when the two work together. One can plant flowers in other people’s gardens even when they won’t flourish in one’s own back yard. It’s the same principle as telling a rosary. After you’ve hammered out half-a-dozen Pater and a hundred or so Aves, they begin to take some meaning, don’t they? ’Vain repetitions’ have their comfort after all. I heard such a nice story the other day about two dear Evangelical old ladies. At seventy-five and eighty, foreseeing the near approach of death, they began to take lessons on the harp, because they thought the knowledge could be turned to account later on in Paradise. "Oh, delicious!" said Cummings. He pulled the blind up, so that the light fell more fully on Evelyn’s face. "I’ve finished whining. Now tell me how the world has been treating you for the last few years." Evelyn moved away restlessly to the window.