“Why, the one that could and did—who else?”
“We know nothing about such a somebody. All we know is, that there they are, and we have got to love them!”
“Ah!” she said, and looked up into the wide sky, where now the “wandering moon” was alone,
Like one that had been led astray
Through the heaven's wide pathless way,
and gazed as if she searched for the Somebody. “I should like to see the one that made that!” she said at last. “Think of knowing the very person that made that poor pigeon, and has got it now!—and made Miss Brown—and the wind! I must find him! He can't have made me and not care when I ask him to speak to me! You say he is nowhere! I don't believe there is any nowhere, so he can't be there! Some people may be content with things; I shall get tired of them, I know, if I don't get behind them! A thing is nothing without what things it! A gift is nothing without what gives it! Oh, dear! I know what I mean, but I can't say it!”
“You don't know what you mean, but you do say it!” thought Richard.
He was nowise repelled by her enthusiasm, for there was in it nothing assailant, nothing too absurdly superstitious. He did not care to answer her.
They went walking toward the house and were silent. The moon went on with her silentness: she never stops being silent. When they felt near the house, they fell to walking slower, but neither knew it. Barbara spoke again:
“Just fancy!” she said, “—if God were all the time at our backs, giving us one lovely thing after another, trying to make us look round and see who it was that was so good to us! Imagine him standing there, and wondering when his little one would look round, and see him, and burst out laughing—no, not laughing—yes, laughing—laughing with delight—or crying, I don't know which! If I had him to love as I should love one like that, I think I should break my heart with loving him—I should love him to the killing of me! What! all the colours and all the shapes, and all the lights, and all the shadows, and the moon, and the wind, and the water!—and all the creatures—and the people that one would love so if they would let you!—and all—”
“And all the pain, and the dying, and the disease, and the wrongs, and the cruelty!” interposed Richard.