I don't know whether it was the shawl drawn about drooped shoulders, or the association of a lifted face by the window, but I thought of the hop-picker. And of the promise I had made. Yes, and kept.
As long as I had been at Duncombe after that haggard woman passed, no other with my knowing had gone hungry away.
Not all suffering, then, was utterly vain.
What was the white-capped figure looking at—so steadily, so long?
I raised myself on my elbow, and leaned forward till I, too, could see. A tracery of branches, bare, against a clear-coloured sky; and through the crossing lines, a little white moon looked through its sky-lattice into the open window of my room.
I got up, so weak I had to cling hold of table and chair, till I stood by the nurse. She was asleep, poor soul! But I hardly noticed her then. I was looking up in a kind of ecstasy, for it seemed to me that a pale young face—not like the Bettina I had known, and still Bettina's face, was leaning down out of Heaven to bring me comfort.
But as I looked I saw there was high purpose as well as a world of pity in the face—as though she would have me know that not in vain her innocence had borne the burden of sin.
And I was full of wondering. Till, suddenly, I realised that not to comfort me alone, nor mainly, was Betty leaning out of heaven ... she was come to do for others what no one had done for her.
Then the agony of the sacrifice swept over me afresh. I remembered I had gone back into that last Darkness saying, as I had said ten thousand times before: "Why had this come to Betty?"
And now again I asked: "Why had it to be you?"