"I can't do anything more for you?" I asked when we reached the door.
"Nothing, dear, thank you," she said, in her natural tone. "I should like a little while alone. But you have been a comfort, Gladys,—" and she kissed me. "And now I know you will ask no questions, and will try to forget this little scene."
I said I would "try," though of course forgetting is out of the question, and I was turning away, when she put her hand on mine.
"One word," she said very low. "My dear,—you have not to blame him. Remember that. He did once ask me, and I refused him. He was perfectly free. I did not know till later how much I cared,—and he has never known."
Then she moved away, and I shut the door. But oh,—what a pity! If he had but known in time! I wonder if it could not have been helped somehow,—if only anybody could have put things straight!
And yet perhaps they are really straight, and just what they ought to be. I wonder if we shall look back by-and-by, and see that all our worries and disappointments were the best and happiest things for us, and the very things we would have chosen, if we could have seen farther ahead!
Only last Sunday Miss Con and I had a little talk about this. I was thinking about my disappointment, which she does not know of. When I said something like what I have just written, she said—
"Yes,—except in those cases where we have brought our troubles on ourselves."
"And never then?" I asked. "Ought we not to say then that they are God's will?"
"In a sense—yes," she answered. "All things that happen are permitted by God. It certainly is His will that we should suffer in this life the natural results of our own wrong-doing or folly. But that is not the whole of the matter. On the one hand, we must never say that He wills any one to act wrongly.