He turned his wise, care-wrinkled face towards me gravely. “I’m wondering,” he said. “There’s only one thing to do--ask God about it. You did wrong in coming--there’s no disguising that. But the good God’s spared you. He knows what He means you to do. I’m an old fellow, and I’ve seen a heap of suffering and trouble. I’ve seen men die on the battlefield, and I’ve seen ’em go under when it was least expected. I don’t know how I’d have come through, if I hadn’t believed God knew what He was doing. I guess if He’d been lazy, like me and you, He’d just have let you slip out, ’cause it seemed easiest. But He hasn’t, and He knows why He hasn’t. I’d just leave it in His hands.” Long after he had ceased to speak, I lay thinking of his words--thinking how simple life would be if God were exactly like this old man. Then I began to hope that He might be--a kind of doctor of sick souls, who would get up out of bed and come driving through the night without complaining, just to bring quiet to sinful people like myself. I closed my eyes, trying to think that God sat beside me. Some time must have elapsed, but when I looked round the doctor was still there. His head was bowed forward from his bent shoulders, nodding. “You’re tired. I can sleep now.” He awoke with a jerk. His last words to me before he left were, “Just leave it in His hands.” From then on there was a changed atmosphere in the house. We had all been afraid of one another and of one another’s misunderstandings. When Dorrie had gone to bed, Vi would sit within the circle of the lamp and read to me while I lay back on my pillows in the shadows, watching how the gold light broke about her face and hands. She was always doing something, either reading or sewing, as though when we were alone she were afraid to trust herself. One evening she said to me, “You haven’t asked if there are any letters.” “I wasn’t expecting any.” “Weren’t expecting any! Why not?” “Because none of my friends know that I’ve come to Sheba.” She drew her face back from the lamp; her sewing fell from her hands. My words had reminded us both of the guilty situation which lay unchanged behind our present attitude. It was she who broke the silence. “When you were taken ill I wrote Ruthita and told her--and told her that you were being nursed in our house.” She brought me my letters and then made an excuse to leave me to myself. My father had written; so had the Snow Lady. After expressing concern for my health, the tone of their letters became constrained and unnatural; they refrained from accusing me, but they had guessed. Ruthita’s was an awkward, shamefaced little note--it puzzled me by omitting to say anything of Halloway.