“I suppose we have the sorrow, and the infinite love is God's. We mustn't call even our love infinite, Robert.”
He hesitated for a few moments before he replied—
“I call it no name.”
“Still,” she said, “the very book in which the vanity of all things is most insisted on has lived itself nearly three thousand years. Solomon has given the lie to his own despair of being remembered. This is why I never feel sad now when I think about the other fears which made him discontented.”
“Were they fears? I believe he wanted to conquer the world, which is strong, and his own weakness, which was even stronger, as an adversary. We must know the measure of a man's desires before we can sound the depths of his regrets.”
Again she put out her hand, but this time she took his, following the instinct of a child who finds itself with a trusted companion in a gloomy road.
“Nothing unknown can be wished for,” she said gently, “and so, if some few things did not last, we should not have this dissatisfaction at the thought of their perishing. But what is troubling you? The greatest cross is to be without a cross. You, dearest, are never at ease unless you are at least suffering tortures for some friend.”
“I am thinking of myself now—myself only. I can't forget that every supreme blessing must be bought with long sadness, both before and after, and now we are together, I am wondering what I should do—if—if we were separated. I must have the courage to face that thought. I can't put it away because it has defied me, and when a thought defies me, I have to meet it fairly. I do not believe in denying its force, or running away in an opposite direction. I hear its argument and I try to answer it.”
She moved towards him and said in a low voice—
“I have one prayer, and this is that I may outlive you. When you die, I shall soon follow you. It won't seem so very long. But if I should die first I should have to wait, because you would never yield, and your grief would cut sharply and slowly, a little more and a little more each day. And although I might be with you, you could not see me. I should know all your thoughts and yet I could say nothing. Almighty God is too kind to let me be so unhappy after I am dead. This is ‘the confidence wherein I trust.’ This is why I have no fears now. We may have great trials—how can we expect to be exempt from them? But we must help each other to bear them and then they will seem more precious than joys. You see, don't you? You understand, don't you?”