“As to real instant submission,” she said presently, “there _is_ some of it in the world. There are sweet, rare lives capable of great loves and great pains, which yet are kept so attuned to the life of Christ, that the cry in the Garden comes scarcely less honestly from their lips, than from his. Such, like the St. John, are but one among the Twelve. Such, it will do you and me good, dear, at least to remember.” “Such,” I thought when I was left alone, “you new dear friend of mine, who have come with such a blessed coming into my lonely days,--such you must be now, whatever you were once.” If I should tell her that, how she would open her soft eyes! VI. May 9. As I was looking over the green book last night, Aunt Winifred came up behind me and softly laid a bunch of violets down between the leaves. By an odd contrast, the contented, passionless things fell against those two verses that were copied from the German, and completely covered them from sight. I lifted the flowers, and held up the page for her to see. As she read, her face altered strangely; her eyes dilated, her lip quivered, a flush shot over her checks and dyed her forehead up to the waves of her hair. I turned away quickly, feeling that I had committed a rudeness in watching her, and detecting in her, however involuntarily, some far, inner sympathy, or shadow of a long-past sympathy, with the desperate words. “Mary,” she said, laying down the book, “I believe Satan wrote that.” She laughed a little then, nervously, and paled back into her quiet, peaceful self. “I mean that he inspired it. They are wicked words. You must not read them over. You will outgrow them sometime with a beautiful growth of trust and love. Let them alone till that time comes. See, I will blot them out of sight for you with colors as blue as heaven,--the _real_ heaven, where God _will_ be loved the most.” She shook apart the thick, sweet nosegay, and, taking a half-dozen of the little blossoms, pinned them, dripping with fragrant dew, upon the lines. There I shall let them stay, and, since she wishes it, I shall not lift them to see the reckless words till I can do it safely. This afternoon Aunt Winifred has been telling me about herself. Somewhat more, or of a different kind, I should imagine, from what she has told most people. She seems to love me a little, not in a proper kind of way, because I happen to be her niece, but for my own sake. It surprises me to find how pleased I am that she should. That Kansas life must have been very hard to her, in contrast as it was with the smooth elegance of her girlhood; she was very young, too, when she undertook it. I said something of the sort to her. “They have been the hardest and the easiest, the saddest and the happiest, years of all my life,” she answered.