"But if he does not know it, what will be the use? And perhaps he is dead. Ah, listen!" She raised her hands and pressed them against her ears.
"Only the wind, dear; but why need you mind that? October is a stormy month, and those we love are far inland. Come! I see I must read Arthur's last letter to convince you that the meeting has not taken place on the stormy seas, with only a plank between them and destruction. Confess, now, something like this was working in your brain."
"I am very foolish—I know it."
Adèle stooped and kissed her friend: "You are weak, darling. Remember how patient you were with me when my strength seemed as if it would not come. Now it is my turn to keep your courage up; you are wasting away to skin and bone with fretting, Margaret. Have faith!"
"In what, Adèle?"
"In yourself—in God—in the future," replied the young girl quietly.
She rose from her seat by Margaret's side and fetched her Bible. We learn in very different ways. To this young girl, trained from her babyhood to think of nothing better and higher than dress and gayety, than self-pleasing in some form, religion had come of itself.
Adèle had always loved to think of the something that for ever lies beyond this world and its fleeting joys; so it was not strange that in her hour of perplexity she should turn instinctively to this for comfort and help.
The afternoon of that chill October day waned, the last flickering rays of light fled, while the young girl read softly of that beyond—the city that hath no need of the sun, the fair land where night is not.