She smiled rather wanly. "I ought not to worry. It's wrong, isn't it?"
"It's unnecessary," he said. "And it's a handicap to progress. But it's difficult not to when things go wrong, I admit. We need to keep a very tight hold on faith. And even then—"
"Yes, even then—" Stella said, her lips quivering a little—"when the one beloved is in danger, who can be untroubled?"
"We are all in the same keeping," said Bernard gently. "I think that's worth remembering. If we can trust ourselves to God, we ought to be able to trust even the one beloved to His care."
Stella's eyes were full of tears. "I am afraid I don't know Him well enough to trust Him like that," she said.
Bernard leant towards her. "My dear," he said, "it is only by faith that you can ever come to knowledge. You have to trust without definitely knowing. Knowledge—that inner certainty—comes afterwards, always afterwards. You can't get it for yourself. You can only pray for it, and prepare the ground."
Her fingers pressed his feebly. "I wonder," she said, "if you have ever known what it was to walk in darkness."
Bernard smiled. "Yes, I have floundered pretty deep in my time," he said. "There's only one thing for it, you know; just to keep on till the light comes. You'll find, when the lamp shines across the desert at last, that you're not so far out of the track after all—if you're only keeping on. That's the main thing to remember."
"Ah!" Stella sighed. "I believe you could help me a lot."
"Delighted to try," said Bernard.