“Very well. What do you want there now?”
I paused a moment, sobered by a thought that has been growing steadily upon me of late.
“Something more, Aunt Winifred. All these other things are beautiful and dear; but I believe I want—God.
“You have not said much about Him. The Bible says a great deal about Him. You have given me the filling-up of heaven in all its pleasant promise, but—I don’t know—there seems to be an outline wanting.”
She drew my hand up into hers, smiling.
“I have not done my painting by artistic methods, I know; but it was not exactly accidental.
“Tell me, honestly,—is God more to you or less, a more distinct Being or a more vague one, than He was six months ago? Is He, or is He not, dearer to you now than then?”
I thought about it a minute, and then turned my face up to her.
“Mary, what a light in your eyes! How is it?”
It came over me slowly, but it came with such a passion of gratitude and unworthiness, that I scarcely knew how to tell her—that He never has been to me, in all my life, what he is now at the end of these six months. He was once an abstract Grandeur which I struggled more in fear than love to please. He has become a living Presence, dear and real.