“You ought to know,” he returned. “Do you not go to church every Sunday, and say your prayers?”
“I did so while he was here—but never again, never again!” she said, in tones so despairing that Hugh’s growing hardness of humour was melted.
“Why not?” he asked, gently.
“I was getting to believe that there might be a good God,” she said. “That—is crushed—now I know there is not!”
“You do not know what you are saying, poor child!” said Hugh.
What was he to do? What to say? Never in his life had he felt so helpless in thought and word.
She looked up at him with a sad, but quiet little smile.
“Would you, hard as you can be, have taken my father from me?” she said.
“I thought your mind was larger, stronger,” said Hugh, eagerly. “That you could distinguish between this little life and eternity; between our poor human ideas and the Eternal Must Be. I am disappointed.”
She sighed.