The well-taught pupil of the Mission school thought more clearly and felt more keenly than her simple-hearted mother, who had never had her chances; but the more capacious vessel only held in larger measure the bitter wine of pain. She had once or twice to turn her head aside, lest her tears should fall upon the work she was doing and spoil it.
"Mother," she said at last, "I think, if God willed it, it were better I should die. There seems no place in the world for me."
"Child, it is wrong to speak so," Mariam answered. "We must live in the world as long as God pleases. To go out of it by our own act were a sin."
"Except it were to avoid a sin," said Shushan gravely, raising her sad eyes to her mother's.
Both were silent for a moment. Then the mother spoke again.
"Daughter, before you went away you used to tell me the good words you learned in the school. I liked them, and they often came back to me when I was anxious and frightened. You remember how sore afraid I was that day the zaptiehs came for the taxes? Thy father had Gabriel's tax and Hagop's all right, but he thought Kevork's would be paid in Aintab, and never thought of getting ready to pay it here. But they demanded it all the same, and I thought—'Now surely they will beat or torture him or your grandfather, because we have it not.' But I remembered that word you told me from the letter of the holy St. Peter, 'Casting all your care upon Him, for He careth for you.' So I said, 'Jesus, help us!' with all my heart,—and He did. For though they found and took away all our rice, they never saw the barley, or the bulghour, so we have that to live upon. And they went away content."
Shushan put a few stitches in her embroidery before she answered. She was working, with crimson silk, the deep red heart of a rose. Richly the colours glowed beneath the skilful touch of her slight brown fingers, but out of her own life all the colour seemed to have gone. And now it was the strong that failed, and leaned upon the weaker for support; it was the better taught that turned wistfully to the simpler for words of cheer.
"Oh, my mother," she said, "my heart is weary, my heart is sad! Sometimes even it asks of me, and gets no answer: 'Does He care for us Armenians?"
Does He care for Armenians? Not only from the trampled land herself has that cry gone up in the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth,—from many a quiet home in countries far away, wherever the tale of her woes has come, it has echoed and re-echoed. "Strong spirits have wrestled over it with God" in the silent watches of the night, even until the breaking of the day; "tender spirits have borne it as a terrible and undefined secret anguish." Is there any answer, yet, except this one, "What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter"?