“After all, I do believe that Mr. Osmond was right,” she confessed at length. “I am glad to get back my belief in him; but I've come to a horrid bit of lath and plaster in myself where I thought it was all good stone.” She fell asleep and dreamed of the heathen Chinee, reading the translation of the translation of her father's words, and disbelieving altogether in “that invented demagogue, Luke Raeburn.”
The next day Charles Osmond, sitting at work in his study, and feeling more depressed and hopeless than he would have cared to own even to himself, was roused by the arrival of a little three-cornered note. It was as follow:
“Dear Mr. Osmond, You made me feel very angry yesterday, and sad, too, for of course it was a case of 'Et tu, Brute.' But last night I came to the unpleasant conclusion that you were quite right, and that I was quite wrong. To prove to you that I am no longer angry, I am going to ask you a great favor. Will you teach me Greek? Your parable of the heathen Chinee has set me thinking. Yours very sincerely, Erica Raeburn.”
Charles Osmond felt the tears come to his eyes. The straightforward simplicity of the letter, the candid avowal of having been “quite wrong,” an avowal not easy for one of Erica's character to make, touched him inexpressibly. Taking a Greek grammar from his book shelves, he set off at once for Guilford Terrace.
He found Erica looking very white and fragile, and with lines of suffering about her mouth; but, though physically weary, her mind seemed as vigorous as ever. She received him with her usual frankness, and with more animation in her look than he had seen for some weeks.
“I did think you perfectly horrid yesterday!” she exclaimed. “And was miserable, besides, at the prospect of losing one of my heroes. You can be very severe.”
“The infliction of pain is only justified when the inflictor is certain, or as nearly certain as he can be, that the pain will be productive of good,” said Charles Osmond.
“I suppose that is the way you account for the origin of evil,” said Erica, thoughtfully.
“Yes,” replied Charles Osmond, pleased that she should have thought of the subject, “that to me seems the only possible explanation, otherwise God would be either not perfectly good or not omnipotent. His all-wisdom enables Him to overrule that pain which He has willed to be the necessary outcome of infractions of His order. Pain, you see, is made into a means of helping us to find out where that order has been broken, and so teaching us to obey it in the long run.”
“But if there is an all-powerful God, wouldn't it have been much better if He had made it impossible for us to go wrong?”