It was from Fan herself Don learned it at length. They were alone together, and he was talking hopefully of the time when she would be up and about again, and he would take her boating on the river, riding or driving, and they would enjoy, as of old, long rambles through the woods in search of the sweet wild flowers that would come again with the warm spring days.
"Dear Don, dear, dear brother!" she said, giving him a look of yearning affection, "do you not know that when those days come I shall be walking the streets of the New Jerusalem, gathering such fruits and flowers as earth cannot yield?"
A sudden paleness overspread his face, his eyes filled, and his lip quivered. "Fan! Fan!" he cried, with a burst of emotion, "it can't be so! You are too young to die, and we can't spare you. You are weak and low-spirited now, but you will feel better when the bright spring days come."
She smiled sweetly, pityingly upon him, softly stroking his hair with her thin white hand as he bent over her.
"No, dear Don, I am not low-spirited," she said. "I am full of joy in the prospect of being so soon with my Saviour. Brother Charlie says it will not be very long now; a week or two, perhaps."
"I can't believe it! I won't believe it!" he groaned. "While there's life there's hope. It can't be that you want to go away and leave me, Fan?" and his tone was gently, lovingly reproachful.
"No," she said, her voice trembling, "it is pain to think of parting from you and the rest, especially our dear, dear mother, and yet I am glad to go to be with Jesus. Oh, how I long to see His face, to bow at His feet, and thank Him 'for the great love wherewith He hath loved us.'"
"But you have a great deal to live for, we all love you so."
"'In thy presence is fulness of joy,'" she repeated; "'at thy right hand there are pleasures forever more.'
"'For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.'