"Oh, did you?" I asked, greatly touched. "You're not saying that merely to please me?"
The old man's hand fell on my shoulder. "I miss you," he said, simply. "I miss you all the time. You see, I love you." Then, with precipitate selfconsciousness, he closed the door of his New England heart, and from some remote corner of it sent out his cautious after-thought. "I love you," he repeated, primly, "as a sister in the Lord."
Relief Paine lived in Brewster. Her name seemed prophetic, and she once told me that she had always considered it so. Her brother-in-law was my Sunday-school superintendent, and her family belonged to my church. Very soon after my arrival in East Dennis I went to see her, and found her, as she always was, dressed in white and lying on a tiny white bed covered with pansies, in a room whose windows overlooked the sea. I shall never forget the picture she made. Over her shoulders was an exquisite white lace shawl brought from the other side of the world by some seafaring friend, and against her white pillow her hair seemed the blackest I had ever seen. When I entered she turned and looked toward me with wonderful dark eyes that were quite blind, and as she talked her hands played with the pansies around her. She loved pansies as she loved few human beings, and she knew their colors by touching them. She was then a little more than thirty years of age. At sixteen she had fallen downstairs in the dark, receiving an injury that paralyzed her, and for fifteen years she had lain on one side, perfectly still, the Stella Maris of the Cape. All who came to her, and they were many, went away the better for the visit, and the mere mention of her name along the coast softened eyes that had looked too bitterly on life.
Relief and I became close friends. I was greatly drawn to her, and deeply moved by the tragedy of her situation, as well as by the beautiful spirit with which she bore it. During my first visit I regaled her with stories of the community and of my own experiences, and when I was leaving it occurred to me that possibly I had been rather frivolous. So I said:
"I am coming to see you often, and when I come I want to do whatever will interest you most. Shall I bring some books and read to you?"
Relief smiled—the gay, mischievous little smile I was soon to know so well, but which at first seemed out of place on the tragic mask of her face.
"No, don't read to me," she decided. "There are enough ready to do that. Talk to me. Tell me about our life and our people here, as they strike you." And she added, slowly: "You are a queer minister. You have not offered to pray with me!"
"I feel," I told her, "more like asking you to pray for me."
Relief continued her analysis. "You have not told me that my affliction was a visitation from God," she added; "that it was discipline and well for me I had it."
"I don't believe it was from God," I said. "I don't believe God had anything to do with it. And I rejoice that you have not let it wreck your life."