"My good man, I hate quiet and peace! I loathe a quiet life! There, say no more, I never did think much of doctors; and if they can't manage to make a cure of a strong healthy woman like myself, well, they're not of any account at all." She was so furiously angry that she brought on a heart attack, and lay like a frightened exhausted child an hour later. But when she recovered she said no more on the subject, and for several days was very quiet and subdued. Then, one sunny afternoon towards the end of February, as she lay on her couch by her bedroom window looking down upon the spring bulbs in the beds below, she called Rowena to her. "I want to have a real good talk with you. Come and sit down and give me your whole undivided attention. I'm thankful to have got rid of those nurses at last. They were always coming in and interrupting if I happened to get you to myself for a moment or two. And you're rather an elusive sort of creature sometimes, Rowena. You've had such splendid chances of preaching to me on the vanity of life, and the iniquities of my past, and the judgment that has descended upon me, and you've never taken them." "I'm not good at preaching," said Rowena; "but I have prayed for you hard." "I know you have. But now I want a thorough good sermon from you. I'm ready and waiting for it. Begin." Rowena smiled. "What is it you want to be told? You know your Bible as well as I do." "I want to be told," said Mrs. Burke very slowly and impressively, "how my present life can be made bearable. You tried to take away my zest for the life I loved when you first came to me. Now I want you to give me zest for this changed life of mine. Can you do it?" "I don't think I can," said Rowena slowly and thoughtfully; "but I can tell you how to get it. Why should your life be emptier now than it has been? On the contrary, you can make it much fuller." "My dear, when a woman of my age becomes a hopeless, helpless invalid she drops out of everything. Her friends will write letters of condolence. As you know, I have had a good many already, and some of them will come over and see me for a week or two, then they will go their way and forget all about me. Their lives are too much in a rush to remember me. I remember a very young woman. I was very fond of her—struck down by a kind of paralysis. I saw her once after the illness, but never again. It was too painful, and I was too busy. That is how I shall be treated now by my most intimate friends. You see I am looking the thing in the face. Now, what is going to sustain me through this lean time? How can I get through it cheerfully and happily, when everything that I live for has been swept away from me at one fell swoop?" "You'll never do it. It is an impossibility," said Rowena soberly; "if you still persist in living your life apart from God." "Ah! now here comes the sermon. Proceed. Do you think I am going to creep to the feet of the Almighty because I am in trouble?"