Under all these circumstances, Placidia's forbearance must have seemed to herself remarkable. She uttered no rebuke, she pointed no moral, by reminding us of her prophetical sayings. She merely towered above us on her serene heights, a little higher, a little more serene--a very little--than before. And she called me "Olive, my dear," and Roger "poor Roger." But that was partly, no doubt, on account of her being married. Roger bore her superiority most meekly. Indeed, I believe he felt it as much as she did. For Roger _did_ remain at that point of penitence and pardon where the heart keeps sweet, and lowly, and tender. Which, most certainly, I very often did not. For Placidia's condescension, especially to Roger, chafed me often past endurance. Only once I remember his being roused. She had been saying (I forget in what connection) that she hoped Roger would not be too much cast down. "It was never too late to turn over a new leaf; and then there was the consoling example of the Apostle Peter. There was reason to believe that the Apostle Peter was a wiser and better man all his life from his terrible fall. And we know that 'all things work for good,'" said she, "'to them that are called.'" Then Roger, sitting at the other end of the hall cleaning his gun, as we believed out of hearing, suddenly rose, and coming to where we were sitting, stood before Placidia with compressed lips and arms folded tightly on his breast,-- "Cousin Placidia," he said, "never, never say that again. St. Peter was not wiser and better, or even humbler for denying Christ. No doubt he was wiser, and better, and tenderer for that look, for ever and ever; and better for the bitter weeping; but not for the denial, not for the sin." Said my Father, who came in behind Roger as he spoke, laying his hand on Roger's shoulder,-- "True, Roger, true; but though sin can never work for good, the memory of sin may; and at any point in the lowest depths where we turn our back on the husks and our face to the Father's house, God will meet us, and from that moment make the consequences, bitter as they may be, begin to work for good to us." "To us! Father, to us," said Roger, "but to others--how to others? To those our misdoing may have misled or confirmed in evil? We may stop a rock hurled down a precipice. But who can stop all it has set in motion, or undo the ruin it has wrought in its way?" "Nothing works for good," said my Father mournfully, "to those whose faces are turned from God. But He can help us, and will, if we set our whole hearts to it, to counter-work the evil we have wrought. Counter-work, I say, not undo; for to undo a deed done is impossible even to Omnipotence. And that makes sin the one terrible and unalterably evil and sorrowful thing in the world, and the only one."