“It needs our best faith,” she said, “to bear this reticence of God. I cannot help thinking sometimes of a thing Lauderdale said,--I am always quoting him,--from ‘Son of the Soil,’ you remember: ‘It’s an awfu’ marvel, beyond my reach, when a word of communication would make a’ the difference, why it’s no permitted, if it were but to keep a heart from breaking now and then.’ Think of poor Eugénie de Guèrin, trying to continue her little journal ‘To Maurice in Heaven,’ till the awful, answerless stillness shut up the book and laid aside the pen. “But then,” she continued, “there is this to remember,--I may have borrowed the idea, or it may be my own,--that if we could speak to them, or they to us, there would be no death, for there would be no separation. The last, the surest, in some cases the only test of loyalty to God, would thus be taken away. Roman Catholic nature is human nature, when it comes upon its knees before a saint. Many lives--all such lives as yours and mine--would become--” “Would become what?” “One long defiance to the First Commandment.” I cannot become used to such words from such quiet lips. Yet they give me a curious sense of the trustworthiness of her peace. “Founded upon a rock,” it seems to be. She has done what it takes a lifetime for some of us to do; what some of us go into eternity, leaving undone; what I am afraid I shall never do,--sounded her own nature. She knows the worst of herself, and faces it as fairly, I believe, as anybody can do in this world. As for the best of herself, she trusts that to Christ, and he knows it, and we. I hope she, in her sweet humbleness, will know it some day. “I suppose, nevertheless,” she said, “that Roy knows what you are doing and feeling as well as, perhaps better than, he knew it three months ago. So he can help you without harming you.” I asked her, turning suddenly, how that could be, and yet heaven be heaven,--how he could see me suffer what I had suffered, could see me sometimes when I supposed none but God had seen me,--and sing on and be happy. “You are not the first, Mary, and you will not be the last, to ask that question. I cannot answer it, and I never heard of any who could. I feel sure only of this,--that he would suffer far less to see you than to know nothing about you; and that God’s power of inventing happiness is not to be blocked by an obstacle like this. Perhaps Roy sees the end from the beginning, and can bear the sight of pain for the peace that he watches coming to meet you. I do not know,--that does not perplex me now; it only makes me anxious for one thing.” “What is that?” “That you and I shall not do anything to make them sorry.” “To make them sorry?” “Roy would care. Roy would be disappointed to see you make life a hopeless thing for his sake, or to see you doubt his Saviour.” “Do you think _that_?”