Ruth grew imperative. “For God’s sake, try!” she said. “Don’t hate. Don’t curse him like that. Don’t you see—you cannot overcome hate with hate; you can only add to it. I find it so hard myself not to feel as you do. But oh, don’t you see, all his life Dick Carey must have loved, in a small far-off way of course, as God loves. And everything that lived and moved and breathed came within the scope of his tenderness and his pity. And That which was himself did not perish with the physical either. That too is free—free and fighting. You can only overcome hate with love. But on a physical plane, even God Himself can only work through physical instruments.”
She stopped, and looked at North imploringly.
“I have your meaning,” he said more gently. Her sudden weakness moved him indescribably.
“And the worst of it is,” she went on, “I have lately lost that sense of being in touch with him. You remember how I told you about it. It came, I thought, through us both loving the farm, but indeed I did know, in some strange way, what he wanted done and when he was pleased. You will remember I told you. If I could feel still what was best to do, but it is like struggling all alone in the dark! Only one thing I know, I hold to. You cannot overcome hate with hate. You can only overcome hate with love. But the love is going out of the farm. It was so full of it—so full—I could hear it singing always in my heart. But now there is something awful here. I can sense it in the night, I can feel it in all sorts of ways. The peace has gone that was so beautiful, the radiance and the joy. And always now I have instead the sense of great struggle, and some evil thing that threatens.”
“It is not fair on you or on the farm,” said North, very gently now. “Violet ought to leave.”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I have thought so—and yet—I don’t know. I am working in the dark. I know so little really of these things—we all know so little.”
“Her presence is injuring the farm, or so it seems. Indeed, it must be so. A human being full of hate and misery is no fit occupant for any home. Also we have no right——”
Ruth looked at him, and again he felt ashamed. “I beg your pardon,” he said.
“We have the sort of right that you acknowledge, I know, but I don’t think we should claim it.”
“She came to me, or rather, I think, to the farm, to the nearest she could get to him. Or again, it might be the other force driving her. I don’t know. But I can’t send her away. I think of it sometimes, but I know I can’t.”