“Oh, thy children are dead, then?”
“Nay, some dead and some living; but, living or dead, they are my children.”
“This is a wilderment to me. Where is your wife?”
“Everywhere. In early youth, with vows unutterable, I wed my church. She is Humanity’s mother, and I the father of all of her children, who will let me serve them.”
“And is this the Christian faith?”
“It is mine, anyway.”
“I like it. I’m sure it must be safe; being so good, and so you may be my father that way. Are there many fathers like you?”
“Many, and many needed, else sin will make all orphans.”
“And you have no wife, no home?”
“A home most beautiful, which, at sunset, I’ll enter through a door, once shut, not possible to be opened by my hands, though its fastenings be but grass and daisies.”