I had forgotten. How could I? We are most selfishly blinded by our own griefs. No other form than ours ever seems to walk with us in the furnace. Her few words made me feel, as I could not have felt if she had said more, that this woman who was going to help me had suffered too; had suffered perhaps more than I,--that, if I sat as a little child at her feet, she could teach me through the kinship of her pain. “O my dear,” she said, and held me close, “I have trodden every step of it before you,--every single step.” “But you never were so wicked about it! You never felt--why, I have been _afraid_ I should hate God! You never were so wicked as that.” Low under her breath she answered “Yes,”--this sweet, saintly woman who had come to me in the dark as an angel might. Then, turning suddenly, her voice trembled and broke:-- “Mary, Mary, do you think He _could_ have lived those thirty-three years, and be cruel to you now? Think that over and over; only that. It may be the only thought you dare to have,--it was all I dared to have once,--but cling to it; _cling with both hands_, Mary, and keep it.” I only put both hands about her neck and clung there; but I hope--it seems, as if I clung a little to the thought besides; it was as new and sweet to me as if I had never heard of it in all my life; and it has not left me yet. “And then, my dear,” she said, when she had let me cry a little longer, “when you have once found out that Roy’s God loves you more than Roy does, the rest comes more easily. It will not be as long to wait as it seems now. It isn’t as if you never were going to see him again.” I looked up bewildered. “What’s the matter, dear?” “Why, do you think I shall see him,--really see him?” “Mary Cabot,” she said abruptly, turning to look at me, “who has been talking to you about this thing?” “Deacon Quirk,” I answered faintly,--“Deacon Quirk and Dr. Bland.” She put her other arm around me with a quick movement, as if she would shield me from Deacon Quirk and Dr. Bland. “Do I think you will see him again? You might as well ask me if I thought God made you and made Roy, and gave you to each other. See him! Why, of course you will see him as you saw him here.” “As I saw him here! Why, here I looked into his eyes, I saw him smile, I touched him. Why, Aunt Winifred, Roy is an angel!” She patted my hand with a little, soft, comforting laugh. “But he is not any the less Roy for that,--not any the less your own real Roy, who will love you and wait for you and be very glad to see you, as he used to love and wait and be glad when you came home from a journey on a cold winter night.” “And he met me at the door, and led me in where it was light and warm!” I sobbed. “So he will meet you at the door in this other home, and lead you into the light and the warmth. And cannot that make the cold and dark a little shorter? Think a minute!” “But there is God,--I thought we went to Heaven to worship Him, and--”