"Never you be frightened, my lamb--because you're so young and don't know things," she whispered, holding her as if she were a baby. "Never you let yourself be frightened for a moment. Your own Dowie's here and always will be--and Dowie knows all about it." "Until you took me on your knee to-night," very low and in broken phrases, "I was so lonely. I was as lonely as I used to be in the old nursery before you and Mademoiselle came. Afterwards--" with a shudder, "there were so many long, long nights. There--always--will be so many. One after every day. I lie in my bed in the dark. And there is _Nothing_! Oh! Dowie, _let_ me tell you!" her voice was a sweet longing wail. "When Donal came back all the world was full and shining and warm! It was full. There was no loneliness anywhere. We wanted nothing but each other. And when he was gone there was only emptiness! And I was not alive and I could not think. I can scarcely think now." "You'll begin to think soon, my lamb," Dowie whispered. "You've got something to think of. After a while the emptiness won't be so big and black." She ventured it very carefully. Her wise soul knew that the Emptiness must come first--the awful world-old Emptiness which for an endless-seeming time nothing can fill-- And all smug preachers of the claims of life and duty must be chary of approaching those who stand desolate gazing into it. "I could only _remember_," the broken heart-wringing voice went on. "And it seemed as if the remembering was killing me over and over again-- It is like that now. But in the Wood Lord Coombe said something strange--which seemed to make me begin to think a little. Only it was like beginning to try to write with a broken arm. I can't go on--I can only think of Donal-- And be lonely--lonely--lonely." The very words--the mere sound of them in her own ears made her voice trail away into bitter helpless crying--which would not stop. It was the awful weeping of utter woe and weakness whose convulsive sobs go on and on until they almost cease to seem human sounds. Dowie's practical knowledge told her what she had to face. This was what she had guessed at when she had known that there had been crying in the night. Mere soothing of the tenderest would not check it. "I had been lonely--always-- And then the loneliness was gone. And then--! If it had never gone--!"