"Yes, but not as James did!"
"That is true. It was foolish in me to expect to console you by such suggestions. But to go back to Mrs. Campbell. She will sympathize with you, if you will let her, as very few can, for she has lost both husband and children."
"Ah, but she had a husband for a time, at least. It is not as if he were snatched away before they had lived together."
If anybody else had said this I should have felt that it was out of mere perverseness. But dear little Helen is not perverse; she is simply overburdened.
"I grant that your disappointment was greater than hers," I went on. "But the affliction was not. Every day that a husband and wife walk hand in hand together upon earth makes of the twain more and more one flesh. The selfish element which at first formed so large a part of their attraction to each other disappears, and the union becomes so pure and beautiful as to form a fitting type of the union of Christ and His church. There is nothing else on earth like it."
Helen sighed.
"I find it hard to believe," she said, "there can be anything more delicious than the months in which James and I were so happy together."
"Suffering together would have brought you even nearer," I replied. "Dear Helen, I am very sorry for you; I hope you feel that, even when, according to my want, I fall into arguments, as if one could argue a sorrow away!"
"You are so happy," she answered. "Ernest loves you so dearly, and is so proud of you, and you have such lovely children! I ought not to expect you to sympathize perfectly with my loneliness."
"Yes, I am happy," I said, after a pause; "but you must own, dear, that I have had my sorrows, too. Until you become a mother yourself, you cannot comprehend what a mother can suffer, not merely for herself, in losing her children, but in seeing their sufferings. I think I may say of my happiness that it rests on something higher and deeper than even Ernest and my children."