"May I go in," he asked, "and light the candle? It is too dark now to read."
She rose quickly, and with an instinctive sense of respect for the parish priest she made hasty efforts to smooth her hair and to wipe her face with her apron. Then she turned into the room, and though her hand still trembled slightly, she contrived to light the candle.
The old priest adjusted his horn-rimmed spectacles on his nose and drew a chair close to the light.
He sat down and read Andor's letter through very slowly. When he had finished, he handed it back to Elsa.
"God's ways, my child, are mysterious," he said, with a short sigh; "it is not for us to question them."
"Mysterious?" exclaimed the girl, with passionate wrath; "I call them cruel and unjust, pater! What have I done, that He should have done this to me? Andor loved me and I loved him, he wrote me a letter full of love, begging for a word from me to assure him that I would always love him and that I would wait for him. Why was that letter kept from me? Why was I not allowed to reply to it? My father would not have kept the letter from me, had he not been stricken down with paralysis on the very day when it came. It is God who kept my happiness away from me. It is God who has spoilt my life and condemned me to regrets and wretchedness, when I had done nothing to deserve such a cruel fate!"
"It is God," interposed the priest gently, "who even at this moment forgives an erring child all the blasphemy which she utters."
Then, as Elsa, dry-eyed and with quivering lips, still looked the personification of revolt, he placed his warm, gentle hands upon hers and drew her a little closer to him.
"Are we, then," he asked softly, "such very important things in the scheme of God's entire creation that everything must be ordered so as to suit us best?"
"I only wanted to be happy," murmured Elsa, in a quivering voice.