"Would you say a woman interfered in the management of her own house? Can one be said to interfere where he is always at work? He is the necessity of the universe, ever and always doing the best that can be done, and especially for the individual, for whose sake alone the cosmos exists. If we had been drowned, we should have given God thanks for saving us." "I do not understand you!" "Should we not have given thanks to find ourselves lifted out of the cold rushing waters, in which we felt our strength slowly sinking?" "But you said DROWNED! How could we have thanked God for deliverance if we were drowned?" "What!--not when we found ourselves above the water, safe and well, and more alive than ever? Would it not be a dreadful thing to lie tossed for centuries under the sea-waves to which the torrent had borne us? Ah, how few believe in a life beyond, a larger life, more awake, more earnest, more joyous than this!" "Oh, _I_ do! but that is not what one means by LIFE; that is quite a different kind of thing!" "How do you make out that it is so different? If I am I, and you are you, how can it be very different? The root of things is individuality, unity of idea, and persistence depends on it. God is the one perfect individual; and while this world is his and that world is his, there can be no inconsistency, no violent difference, between there and here." "Then you must thank God for everything--thank him if you are drowned, or burnt, or anything!" "Now you understand me! That is precisely what I mean." "Then I can never be good, for I could never bring myself to that!" "You cannot bring yourself to it; no one could. But we must come to it. I believe we shall all be brought to it." "Never me! I should not wish it!" "You do not wish it; but you may be brought to wish it; and without it the end of your being cannot be reached. No one, of course, could ever give thanks for what he did not know or feel as good. But what IS good must come to be felt good. Can you suppose that Jesus at any time could not thank his Father for sending him into the world?" "You speak as if we and he were of the same kind!" "He and we are so entirely of the same kind, that there is no bliss for him or for you or for me but in being the loving obedient child of the one Father." "You frighten me! If I cannot get to heaven any other way than that, I shall never get there." "You will get there, and you will get there that way and no other. If you could get there any other way, it would be to be miserable." "Something tells me you speak the truth; but it is terrible! I do not like it." "Naturally." She was on the point of crying. They were alone in the drawing-room of the cottage, but his mother might enter any moment, and Ian said no more.