“Supposing you are right, and Royal was saved at the eleventh hour,” he said at parting, with one of his stolid efforts to be consolatory, that are worse than his rebukes, “if he is singing the song of Moses and the Lamb (he pointed with his big, dingy thumb at the ceiling), _he_ doesn’t rebel against the doings of Providence. All _his_ affections are subdued to God,--merged, as you might say,--merged in worshipping before the great White Throne. He doesn’t think this miser’ble earthly spere of any importance, compared with that eternal and exceeding weight of glory. In the appropriate words of the poet,-- ‘O, not to one created thing Shall our embrace be given, But all our joy shall be in God, For only God is Heaven.’ Those are very spiritooal and scripteral lines, and it’s very proper to reflect how true they are.” I saw him go out, and came up here and locked myself in, and have been walking round and round the room. I must have walked a good while, for I feel as weak as a baby. Can the man in any state of existence be made to comprehend that he has been holding me on the rack this whole evening? Yet he came under a strict sense of duty, and in the kindness of all the heart he has! I know, or I ought to know, that he is a good man,--far better in the sight of God to-night, I do not doubt, than I am. But it hurts,--it cuts,--that thing which he said as he went out; because I suppose it must be true; because it seems to me greater than I can bear to have it true. Roy, away in that dreadful Heaven, can have no thought of me, cannot remember how I loved him, how he left me all alone. The singing and the worshipping must take up all his time. God wants it all. He is a “Jealous God.” I am nothing any more to Roy. March 2. And once I was much,--very much to him! His Mamie, his poor Queen Mamie,--dearer, he used to say, than all the world to him,--I don’t see how he can like it so well up there as to forget her. Though Roy was a very good boy. But this poor, wicked little Mamie,--why, I fall to pitying her as if she were some one else, and wish that some one would cry over her a little. I can’t cry. Roy used to say a thing,--I have not the words, but it was like this,--that one must be either very young or very ungenerous, if one could find time to pity one’s self. I have lain for two nights, with my eyes open all night long. I thought that perhaps I might see him. I have been praying for a touch, a sign, only for something to break the silence into which he has gone. But there is no answer, none. The light burns blue, and I see at last that it is morning, and go down stairs alone, and so the day begins. Something of Mrs. Browning’s has been keeping a dull mechanical time in my brain all day. “God keeps a niche In Heaven to hold our idols: ... albeit He brake them to our faces, and denied That our close kisses should impair their white.”