"I'd give anything if I could believe all that again," came from between his long bony fingers. "It's breaking my mother's heart to have me leave the faith!"
The slick hay-like hair fell in wisps over his hands, his high, bony shoulders were hunched despairingly over Courtland's study table. He was a great, pitiful object.
"Why don't you, then?" said Courtland, getting up and going to the closet for his overcoat. "It's up to you, you know. You can! God can't do it for you, and of course there's nothing doing till you've taken that step. I found that out!"
"But how do you reconcile things, calamities, disasters, war, suffering, that poor old woman lying on her attic bed alone? How do you reconcile that with the goodness of God?"
"I don't reconcile it. It isn't my business. I leave that to God. If I understood all the whys and wherefores of how this universe is run I'd be great enough to be a God myself."
"But if God is omniscient I can't see how He can let some things go on! He must be limited in power or He'd never let some things happen if He's a good God!" Wittemore's voice had a plaintive sound.
"Well, how do you know that? In the first place, how can you be sure what is a calamity? And say, did it ever strike you that some of the things we blame on God are really up to us? He's handed over His power for us to do things, and we haven't seen it that way; so the things go undone and God is charged with the consequences."
"I wish I could believe that!" said Wittemore.
"You can! When you really want to, enough, you will! Come on, let's get that prayer down to the old lady! I'm sort of an amateur yet, but I'll do my best."
They went out into the mist and murk of a spring thaw. Wittemore never forgot that night's experience—the prayer, and the walk home again through the fog. The old woman died at dawning.