"It is your own pride that is hurt," answered her inexorable conscience. "You wanted to pose as a Lady Bountiful. It is humiliating to let these poor people see that you are of no consequence in your uncle's house. Christ kept no carriage. It is not what you do but what you are, that proves your kinship with the Lord."
It was a very humble Evadne who, late in the afternoon, walked slowly towards the German quarter. "I am very sorry," she said quietly, when she had reached the spotless rooms where Gretchen made a home for her crippled brother, "my cousin had made arrangements to use the sleigh this afternoon, so we could not have our drive. I am very sorry."
And they put their own disappointment out of sight, these kindly German folk, and tried to make her think they cared as little as if they were used to driving every day.
"Did you notice, Gretchen," said Hans, after Evadne had left them, "how sweet our Fraulein was this afternoon? But her eyes looked as if she had been crying. Do you suppose she had?"
"I think, Hans," said Gretchen slowly, "our Fraulein is learning to dwell where God wipes all the tears away."
"Are your eyes no better, Frau Himmel?" Evadne was saying as she shook hands with another friend who was patiently learning the bitter truth that she would never be able to see her beloved Fatherland again. "Are the doctors quite sure that nothing can be done?"
"Quite sure, Fraulein Hildreth," answered the woman with a smile, "but there is one glorious hope they can't take from me."
"A hope, Frau Himmel, when you are blind! What can it be?"
"This, dear Fraulein," and the look on the patient face was beautiful to see. "'Thine eyes shall see the King in his beauty; they shall behold the land that is very far off.'"
And Evadne, walking homeward, repeated the words which she had read that morning with but a dim perception of their meaning. 'If limitation is power that shall be, if calamities, opposition and weights are wings and means—we are reconciled.'