“But,” said Harcourt, setting down his empty cup on the waiter she still held, “if one has sinned—grievously, basely, atrociously sinned—what then? What then?”
She looked at his pale, haggard, questioning face for a few moments and then said:
“You are putting a case that is not your own, I feel sure. You are incapable of baseness or atrocity. Yet I will answer your question. If one has sinned—feels that he has so sinned—despairs because he has so sinned—still let him go to his Father in heaven. To whom else in the universe could he go?”
“To Christ.”
“He is the Father. But I told you I would not preach, and I won’t. I only wished to say this simple thing: Whatever your trouble may be, take it to your Saviour God. Now let me bring you another cup of coffee.”
“Are you not mixing spiritual and material up very considerably?” inquired Harcourt.
“We cannot help mixing them up in this world. Were they not so mixed in the ‘last supper’? Are they not mixed everywhere in this world?” said the woman as she took up the waiter and went off to her room to replenish the empty cup from the hot coffee pot on her stove.
“Thank you,” said Harcourt as he received the second cup from her hands. “Thank you. But I feel like a sneak and a coward to be sitting here taking all these attentions from you and telling you nothing about myself.”
“You will tell me after a while. I do not wish to force your confidence. You will find relief in telling me after a while; but not so much as you will find when you carry your burden where I told you to carry it, and where your New Testament would have told you, if you had read it.”
“How do you know I don’t read it?”