But thanks be to God who has provided a voice to answer me out of the deeps.
Auntie and I walked home without any remarks (we overheard Deacon Quirk observe to a neighbor: “That’s what I call a good gospel sermon, now!”), sent Faith away to Phœbe, sat down in the parlor, and looked at each other.
“I know it,” said she.
Upon which we both began to laugh.
“But did he say the dreadful truth?”
“Not as I find it in my Bible.”
“That it is probable, only probable that we shall recognize—”
“My child, do not be troubled about that. It is not probable, it is sure. If I could find no proof for it, I should none the less believe it, as long as I believe in God. He gave you Roy, and the capacity to love him. He has taught you to sanctify that love through love to Him. Would it be like Him to create such beautiful and unselfish loves,—most like the love of heaven of any type we know,—just for our threescore years and ten of earth? Would it be like Him to suffer two souls to grow together here, so that the separation of a day is pain, and then wrench them apart for all eternity? It would be what Madame de Gasparin calls, ‘fearful irony on the part of God.’”
“But there are lost loves. There are lost souls.”