Gavine's young pulses throbbed, yet her eyes were troubled.
"I think I'm like a watch without a mainspring. I have great ideas of what can be done, what ought to be done, and of what I mean to do, but I don't seem to get the power to do it. I'll confess to you, Miss Urquhart. Jockie has been giving me sick poor to go and see in the village. I've all my life wanted to visit the poor. I've had to content myself with waiting on a sick aunt, and I've felt all my talents were hidden and wasted. Well, I've visited the poor; but, do you know, my tongue has been dumb. What can I say to help or comfort a mother who is doing her share of wage-earning by days out at farms, a mother who gets from her husband thirteen shillings a week, and has eleven children to bring up and fit out in life upon it? What can I say to a partially paralysed old woman who lies in bed day after day alone with her thoughts, and only a dirty, cracked ceiling and a dingy coloured wall to feast her eyes upon? It makes me wonder, now I have got the desire of my heart, whether that will turn to dust and ashes when I touch it."
"Why do you want to work so much?" said Sidney softly.
"Why? I don't know, except that I've always had a contempt for wastelings, for idlers, for cumberers of the ground. We're put into the world to make it better, aren't we? We have to work our way to heaven. That is my goal. I do think it is. I want to be inside its gates one day. And a lifetime here is only a fragment of eternity, is it not?"
Gavine's eyes were glowing, her heart was in her words.
"Yes," said Sidney. "You want to be a builder with the rest of us."
"I do, I do. I have all the longings for it in the abstract, but I am beginning to doubt myself, to wonder what practical value I am going to be in the world."
"Oh, Gavine dear, you will be all right if you build on the right foundation. But a creed of good works erected on the sand will topple over before they reach heaven. And it is such dreary work wondering if one has done enough, or will do enough to pay for what has already been paid for. Don't you know from your Bible that eternal life can never be bought—that it is a gift?"
"We must work out our own salvation," murmured Gavine.
"Yes, work it out, but it must be given us first. That is such a misunderstood verse. We work, for love compels more forcefully than the desire to escape death. Do you remember St. Paul's words?—'And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity,' or Love. Christianity is the gospel of Love. Christ earned heaven for you, He showed His love by dying, and by bearing your sins. He could do no more. When God Himself said, 'It is finished,' do you think it needs our puny attempts, even of a lifetime, to add to His scheme of salvation? We can show our gratitude and love to Him by a good life and good work; that is our absolute duty, but when every act pleases the One you love, it is such happy work."