Presently I realized with a guilty start that I wasn't following my usual petitions. I had prayed only for Richard, and then, gazing down on the beach where we stood such a short time ago, I re-lived that moment and the ones that followed. The memory was as sacred as any prayer. It was not for its intrusion that my conscience smote me, but it seemed wickedly selfish to be forgetting those whom I had knelt purposely to remember: Father and Barby, all those in peril on the sea, all the victims of war and the brave souls everywhere, fighting for the peace of the world. And dear old Uncle Darcy—in the very first hour of his terrible loneliness—how could I forget to ask comfort for him?
Stretching out my arms to that shining space above the water I whispered, "Dear God, is it right for me to be so happy with such awful heartache in the world?"
But no answer came to me out of that wonderful glory. All I seemed to hear was Uncle Darcy's quavering words—"But love abides! Death cannot take that!"
And presently as I kept on kneeling there I knew that was the answer: "Love that beareth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things" is God-given. Heartache and Death may touch every life for a time, but Love abides through the ages.
CHAPTER XXI
"PIRATE GOLD"
If this were a novel instead of my memoirs, I'd skip now to Richard's part of it, and tell his thoughts and feelings as he lay awake for hours, trying to adjust himself to his new outlook on the future. But I didn't know about that till afterward. It only came out bits at a time in the few hours we had together before he went away. We had so little time by ourselves.