“What matter whose act if we see God back of the actor. I’ve a message from on high!”
“Why, thou dost astound me!”
“Methinks no man more needs astounding. May righteousness enter the gates opened by wonder, and so move thee into Rizpah’s home and thine; death is there!”
“Is there? has been! When love was slain, I shut out its bleeding form with the mourning robes of a long forgetfulness.
“There are hopes that die to live no more; so there are homes which bereft of their household Penates are doomed to grim ruin forever. See these giant dwellings. They tell it all.
“Thou art a Christian, I believe; but like the disciples, Cleopas and Luke, with eyes holden; not discerning the Lord.
“Just as some, having embalmed the body, looked into the tomb at a napkin only, seeing merely the place where He lay. Though puzzled that the grave’s seal was broken, they were still blind to the miracle of a new dawn, simultaneous with the unclasping of night’s grim arms. They had heard of the resurrection to be, yet they reasoned that the Promiser was surely dead. Love alone, in the person of Mary Magdalene, most loving because most forgiven, overleaped all doubts, disappointments and fears, to hie away in the thinning darkness, in an utter abandonment to her trust in the words of Him, to whom her heart was given. That was love indeed.”
“Oh, priest, ’tis so. A woman; a woman; leading in religion! I do not much bepraise her, for she, being a woman, easily could believe, where men doubted.”
“It would have been cruel to have crossed her faith, would it not, Sir Charleroy?”
“Yes, on my soul, yes!”