The door stood open to receive them; but ere they reached it, a bright-looking little woman, with delicate lines of ingrained red in a sorrowful face, appeared in it, looking out with questioning eyes—like a mother-bird just loosening her feet from the threshold of her nest to fly and meet them. Through the film that blinded those expectant eyes, Marion saw what manner of woman she was that drew nigh, and her motherhood went out to her. For, in the love-witchery of Isy’s yearning look, humbly seeking acceptance, and in her hesitating approach half-checked by gentle apology, Marion imagined she saw her own Isy coming back from the gates of Death, and sprang to meet her. The mediating love of the minister, obliterating itself, had made him linger a step or two behind, waiting what would follow: when he saw the two folded each in the other’s arms, and the fountain of love thus break forth at once from their encountering hearts, his soul leaped for joy of the new-created love—new, but not the less surely eternal; for God is Love, and Love is that which is, and was, and shall be for evermore—boundless, unconditioned, self-existent, creative! “Truly,” he said in himself, “God is Love, and God is all and in all! He is no abstraction; he is the one eternal Individual God! In him Love evermore breaks forth anew into fresh personality—in every new consciousness, in every new child of the one creating Father. In every burning heart, in everything that hopes and fears and is, Love is the creative presence, the centre, the source of life, yea Life itself; yea, God himself!” The elder woman drew herself a little back, held the poor white-faced thing at arms’-length, and looked her through the face into the heart. “My bonny lamb!” she cried, and pressed her again to her bosom. “Come hame, and be a guid bairn, and ill man sall never touch ye, or gar ye greit ony mair! There’s _my_ man waitin for ye, to tak ye, and haud ye safe!” Isy looked up, and over the shoulder of her hostess saw the strong paternal face of the farmer, full of silent welcome. For the strange emotion that filled him he did not seek to account: he had nothing to do with that; his will was lord over it! “Come ben the hoose, lassie,” he said, and led the way to the parlour, where the red sunset was shining through the low gable window, filling the place with the glamour of departing glory. “Sit ye doon upo the sofa there; ye maun be unco tired! Surely ye haena come a’ the lang ro’d frae Tiltowie upo yer ain twa wee feet?” “’Deed has she,” answered the minister, who had followed them into the room; “the mair shame to me ’at loot her dee ’t!”