So there was nothing to do but to get up again and go on alone. Presently the road seemed to grow worse still, and it seemed as if it would never end. “Why am I coming?” she kept saying to herself. “No one told me I was coming for anything, and I’m beginning to think father can’t be here at all.” And then in the darkest, weariest part the road bent suddenly to the right and there was father! She was so pleased to see him that for the time she thought of nothing else. But after a while she looked around, and there on one side she saw the forest, and behind him on the other a glorious, pure white light was streaming. What it was, or what its shape, she could not tell, but it was something like a cross, and then an altar. And this meeting was full of happiness which had in it no pain. Why, even as she stayed there he left her and went away to walk in the glorious garden beyond the light, but she scarcely felt the parting, and laughed and said, “Why, I’ve let father go;” and he answered, “No, I’m here. I walk here, whilst you walk in the shade.” And she woke from her dream comforted and happier and lighter than she had ever been for months. But afterwards she thought about it very much. “I wonder what that light was. I really wonder what it was. As soon as it shone on me I felt happy. I’ll go back into the forest again and find out.” But she never went, neither did she dream of him again in any form. “I want to go back again, I want to go,” she cried. “I want to find him and talk with him again, for I felt no pain when I awoke.” CHAPTER XI Then as the months passed by everything settled down into a more or less level state. But in Deborah’s life two great gaps had been made—one the place left empty by her father, the other the place left empty by God. Both had completely disappeared together, and she had no more power to recall the one than the other. Not that any difference showed itself on the outside. She was still the same quiet, unobtrusive, uninteresting child, with the same bundle of infirmities and the same nervous dread of people and of things, which latter infirmity, however, only appeared now and then. “It’s no good,” she would say at times after trying hard to pray. “I can’t do it. I haven’t the same interest in praying for myself. Besides, where’s the use?” But giving up religion was a hard thing to Deborah. It left life so grey and lifeless. There were no more beautiful dreams about the angels, and no more trust in God’s love and mercy—and without these religion was a blank. Gradually, however, every bit of her spare time became filled by the people from that other world. It was not left till night to visit them—she was with them nearly all the day. At prayer time especially they called all attention to themselves and by degrees she forgot to feel the sharp stinging pain whenever she knelt down beside the bed.