“To your father, if you will. But the world has not been injured by anything you have done, and you owe it no reparation. It is not our function to supply the world with the empty scandals it delights in. Suffering is a holy but a very awful thing. We will have no more superfluous suffering, Ursula.”
“It shall all be as you wish,” she humbly answered, her head at rest upon his shoulder. She closed her eyes. “Gerard, I am not afraid of them. I was never afraid of them. But from the very first, I think, I was afraid of God.”
“God be thanked for it!” said Gerard, softly. And a flood of sunlight, falling leisurely around them, lighted into sudden brilliance the cross upon his breast.
THE END
FOOTNOTES:
[A] Title of unmarried ladies of rank.
[B] Vulgar Dutch idiom.
[C] To “drink coffee” is old-fashioned Dutch for “lunch.”
[D] To love.