She went over to the closet, with her arms stretched out.
She went in, where Aunt Blin's clothes were hanging. She grasped the old, worn dress, that was almost warm with the wearing. She hid her face against the sleeve, curved with the shape of the arm that had bent to its tasks in it.
"Tell me, Aunt Blin! You can see clear, where you are. Is there any good—any right in it? Ought I to tell him that I care?"
She cried, and she waited; but she got no answer there. She came away, and sat down.
She was left all to herself in the hard, dreary world, with this doubt, this temptation to deal with. It was her wilderness; and she did not remember, yet, the Son of God who had been there before her.
"Why do they go off so far away in that new life, out of which they might help us?"
She did not know how close the angels were. She listened outside for them, when they were whispering already at her heart. We need to go in; not to reach painfully up, and away,—after that world in which we also, though blindly, dwell.
On the table lay Aunt Blin's great Bible; beside it her glasses.
Something that Miss Euphrasia had told them one day at the chapel, came suddenly into her mind.
"The angels are always near us when we are reading the Word, because they read, always, the living Word in heaven."