Linda's lip was caught between her teeth, and her brow frowning, as she finished reading. She turned the letter back to read again the sentences about her father. Here was no uncertain note.
She crumpled the sheets between her hands and closed her eyes.
"Oh, God, You have taken away my father. Help us now to clear his name!"
It was a cry from her heart, the first time in all this eternity of days that her thought had turned to the Higher Power with any feeling save resentment. She saw her friend lying on the sun-warmed rocks in the sunlit atmosphere of a joyous June day, longing to help her, longing to impart to her the sustaining calm of her own faith, and gratitude woke feebly in her.
She rose, and carried the letter to her bedroom, folding it again in its envelope. It did not belong in her desk. Such a message from the woman who had long been her ideal was a thing apart. She placed it in the back of a drawer in her dresser, and there her hand encountered a scrap of paper which she drew forth. Its clear lettering stood out against the ivory-white background.
"Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree—"
She read no further. The calendar again! She recalled also that leaf which in the studio she had marked for Mrs. Porter's reproach:—
"When thy father and thy mother forsake thee, then the Lord will take thee up."
She dropped the papers and covered her eyes again with her hands.
"Oh, Mother, Mother!" she moaned above her breath. "How could God, if there is a God, comfort me as you would!"