"I wonder what it all means," he observed. "Sometimes I feel that I am a child of some dark tragedy. Again I feel like I am a child of special Providence. I wonder which I am—perhaps neither."
"Perhaps both," she said "Great suffering and great joy belong to the same soul."
Ann was still sitting on the damp rock with her vine wreath in her hair. Through the tall trunks of the trees on the bluff above, the sun-light fell into the ravine, a ray falling across her head and shoulders.
As if he had forgotten everything else, Abe Lincoln now turned his attention to her. He looked long and earnestly.
"Ann—Ann—is it true?"
"What?" she said with some surprise.
"That you are mine."
"What a strange question."
"I am afraid sometimes that it is too good to be true. I have never known such happiness—such riches—such enlargement of my soul as since I have known you. Many men have claimed to get to God through his Son. I am findin' my way through one of his daughters."
"No—no—I am only God's little girl—his little schoolgirl, and just beginning to learn. Sometimes I cannot understand it from the preachers, but here God teaches me quite easily."