When we had finished dinner Aunt Jael settled down as usual for her doze and Grandmother went upstairs to her bedroom to study the Word. At our visitor's request I was excused Lord's Day's school and permitted to go for a walk with him.
We went out of the town along by the river to the woods. I was tongue-tied, waiting for him to speak. I was proud a little, confused a little, shy a little, yet down in my heart quite at ease. Above every other sentiment I was happy. Partly because of the new prospects he had opened for me, partly because of the extraordinary coincidence by which the Stranger and my mother's little boy were one and the same person, chiefly because I liked him, and he liked me.
After a while he began to talk, and so did I. I was too naïvely egotistical to see it then, but he made me talk, led me on all unconscious to most garrulous self-expression. I grievously broke my ancient rule of listening to other people, of absorbing things rather than imparting them. I told him all about our life at Bear Lawn, about Aunt Jael and Grandmother, about Uncle Simeon also and Torribridge, with discreet omissions as to Christmas and New Year's Nights. Nor did I tell him, for I could have told no one, a word about my own inner life; it was too sacred, too ridiculous.
What was his inner life? I fell to wondering.
In my bedroom, on the evening of this wonderful Lord's Day a long and tearful vigil. I had just got into my nightgown, when my Grandmother came in. She closed the door more quietly, yet more decisively, than usual. I knew what was going to happen. She came to me, took my arm, and looked straight into my eyes.
"Child," she said, "you've taken away the brightest hope of my old age. The light is gone out of my life."
With any one else there would have been a catch in the voice. In that moment I understood and admired and pitied her more than in all the years before. I felt the poignancy of her sorrow, and the measure of my own shallowness and shame. I was her child, more than her child, her daughter's gift to be given to the service of God; my dedication to His Service was her supreme offering to Him Whom she loved with a love beyond my understanding.
We knelt down together for the longest prayer that I remember.... Now that I had forsworn my holy dedication and chosen the worldly path, God grant that I might still walk as in His sight. I had confessed in baptism that I had been raised with the Lord Jesus, and now I had preferred a worldly future to the unsearchable riches of Christ. Might the Lord in His mercy vouchsafe that my salvation might still be secured and that she, the old pilgrim, whose call was very near—and I, whose call might be nearer than I thought (ye know not the day nor the hour)—and one other, called already, whom both of us loved the best—might all three be united in tender love and everlasting sisterhood around the throne of God....
I was sobbing.
She broke short, I remember, without finishing the prayer. "Forgive me, my dear, 'tis I who am wrong. I admonish the Lord in vain. What He has willed He has willed. 'Tis a great sorrow. His will be done."