Then she rose from the bed, went to the window and let up the shade. The night of Nature's world, always full of potency, calmed her suddenly into another mood.
"It is snowing," she exclaimed; "that means that rain is falling on new-made graves." She came back from the window. "Lassie," she said, "my heart is broken, my future is crushed, and yet I feel so strong! It floods me fresh. I see now that wherever his soul passed last night, it must have passed in triumph—gone on to further work. I shall work, too. That is the legacy his letter left me—an intense desire to serve. How small I am, how great God is; all life's misery results from setting our little wills in opposition to His plan for our best. It is borne in upon me clearly; I recognize the fact well. Now when I leave this room next time and forever henceforth, so long as I live, I am willing with my whole soul to do whatever work there is laid out for me. I feel in my heart that no stumbling or even ridicule for stumbling can ever again cause me to falter. I have found Truth. I will be strong."
Lassie looked at her in wonder. The white look of unearthly radiance which men once knew as "Ecstasy" was indeed on her face now—on her pale, sad, worn face, filling it with a glow of wondrous resolution.
"Oh, Alva!" the girl exclaimed, and then, even as the exclamation left her lips, she was conscious of an upleaping of warm, human joy to think of the six o'clock train and Ingram's companionship. The higher plane was very high above her yet.
Alva pressed her hands to her eyes and face. "That was like a lightning flash, dear," she said; "oh, if I may only live by its light forever after. If only!" There was a brief silence; then,—
"I must pick up my things, I guess," the girl suggested.
"Yes, dear," Alva tried to smile; "yes, you must pick up your things. That's what life here means."
Lassie slipped into her own room. She was glad that Alva was quiet and that she could smile upon her again; it was truly what life meant to her. She was very little yet and very blind, and the angels might have been smiling meaningly and mercifully at one another over her pretty, childish head that hour.
But over Alva the Spirits of Heaven might have wept,—as they weep for any on earth who fancy that they have sounded either the depths or the heights of any design wrought out above.
Above is so far above, and we and all our hopes and joys and sorrows are so far beneath. So far beneath that radiant serenity which moves eternally forward in its fulfilling of the Divine Plan. His Divine Plan for the uplifting of all that He has made.