QUESTIONS
The thing that crushed the spirit of the man was not the shock of death with its thousand and one unanswerable questions torturing the soul, but the possibility that his acts had been the cause of the tragedy. Dr. Williams had said to him over and over again:
"Make her will to live and she'll recover!"
He had fought this grim battle and won. She had willed to live and was happy. The world had never seemed so beautiful as the day she died. If the cause of her death lay further back in the curious accident which happened at the birth of the child, his soul was clear of guilt.
He held none of the morbid fancies of the super-sensitive mind that would make a father responsible for a fatal outcome in the birth of a babe. God made women to bear children. The only woman to be pitied was the one who could not know the pain, the joy and the danger of this divine hour.
But the one persistent question to which his mind forever returned was whether the shock of his sin had weakened her vitality and caused the return of this old trouble.
The moment he left the grave on the day of her burial, he turned to the old doctor with this grim question. He told him the whole story. He told him every word she had spoken since they left home. He recounted every hour of reaction and depression, the good and the bad, just as the recording angel might have written it. He ended his recital with the burning question:
"Tell me now, doctor, honestly before God, did I kill her?"
"Certainly not!" was the quick response.
"Don't try to shield me. I can stand the truth. I don't belong to a race of cowards. After this no pain can ever come but that my soul shall laugh!"