“Just fancy!” she said, “--if God were all the time at our backs, giving us one lovely thing after another, trying to make us look round and see who it was that was so good to us! Imagine him standing there, and wondering when his little one would look round, and see him, and burst out laughing--no, not laughing--yes, laughing--laughing with delight--or crying, I don't know which! If I had him to love as I should love one like that, I think I should break my heart with loving him--I should love him to the killing of me! What! all the colours and all the shapes, and all the lights, and all the shadows, and the moon, and the wind, and the water!--and all the creatures--and the people that one would love so if they would let you!--and all--” “And all the pain, and the dying, and the disease, and the wrongs, and the cruelty!” interposed Richard. She was silent. After a moment or two she said-- “I think I will go in now. I feel rather cold. I think there must be a fog, though I can't see it.” She gave a little shiver. He looked in her face. Was it the moon, or was it something in her thoughts that made the sweet countenance look so gray? Could his mere suggestion of the reverse, the wrong side of the web of creation, have done it? Surely not! “I think I want some one to say _must_ to me!” she said, after another pause. “I feel as if--” There she stopped. Richard said nothing. Some instinct told him he might blunder. He stood still. Barbara went on a few steps, then turned and said-- “Are you not going in?” “Not just yet,” he answered. “Please to remember that if I can do anything for you,--” “You are very kind. I am much obliged to you. If you know another rime,--But I think I shall have to give up poetry.” “It will be hard to find another so good,” returned Richard. “Good-night,” she said. “Good-night, miss!” answered Richard, and walked away, with a loss at his heart. The poem has already ceased to please her! He had made the lovely lady more thoughtful, and less happy than before! “She has been taught to believe in a God,” he said to himself. “She is afraid he will be angry with her, because, in her company, I dared question his existence! A generous God--isn't he! If he be anywhere, why don't he let us see him? How can he expect us to believe in him, if he never shows himself? But if he did, why should I worship him for being, or for making me? If I didn't want him, and I don't, I certainly shouldn't worship him because I saw him. I couldn't. If Nature is cruel, as she certainly is, and he made her, then he is cruel too! There cannot be such a God, or, if there be, it cannot be right to worship him!” He did not reflect that if he had wanted him, he would not have waited to see him before he worshipped him. But Barbara was saying to herself--