"I'm so dreadfully sorry. Don't let it upset you! Don't—tell Jake!"
"You are quite safe with me, dear," Maud assured her. "But can't I help you?"
She knew even as she asked the question that Toby was not prepared to give her full confidence, and her own reserve shrank from asking for it.
Toby looked up at her with quivering lips. "Oh, you are good!" she said.
"I want to be good—like you. But—I don't feel as if I ever shall be."
Maud laid a very gentle hand upon the blue-veined forehead. "I think goodness is only comparative at the best of times, dear," she said. "I don't feel that I am specially good. If I seem so to you, it is probably because my life holds very few temptations to be anything else."
"Ah!" Toby said, with a quick sigh. "And do you think people ought to be made to suffer for—for things they can't help?"
Maud shook her head. "I am afraid it often happens, dear."
"And yet you believe in God," Toby said.
"Yes, I believe in God." With quiet reverence Maud made answer. "And I am quite sure, Toby—quite, quite sure—that He never holds people responsible for the things they can't help."
"Then why—" began Toby restlessly.