"You are very kind to me." Her voice trembled, but she gave him a little smile. "I cannot pretend that I am not distressed; it would be false, and falsehood is not right. You are very, very kind, and I thank you——"
She broke off, as if she had been going to say something more but had wearily forgotten what it was.
"Oh, do not say that!" His voice was like one pleading to be spared a blow. "I love you. There is no greater joy to me on earth than to serve you."
"Hush," she said; "don't say that. I am very sorry for you, but sorrow must come to us all in some way."
"Don't, don't!" he cried—"don't tell me that suffering is good. It is not good; it is an evil. It is right to shun evil; it is the only right. The other is a horrid fable—a lie concocted by priests and devils!"
"Suppose you loved someone—me, for instance—and I was dead, and you knew quite certainly that by dying you would come to where I was—would you call death good or evil?"
He demurred. He did not want to admit belief in anything connected with the doctrine of submission.
"I said 'suppose,'" she said.
"I would go through far more than death to come near you."
"Suffering is just a gate, like death. We go through it to get the things we really want most."