And then, in that day of revelations, there was yet another which startled her for a moment out of her own grief. For Prince Dylar, raising his arms and his face upward, exclaimed with passion: “O Heavenly Father, do we not expiate the sin, whatever it was!” and for the first time she saw a man weep.
How vividly it all rose before her! How like was that child to herself!
“How glad I am that I put my arms around him and tried to comfort him!” she thought.
“My heart has been broken once before, and it healed,” she said, and returned to the present, where her mind swung idly to and fro, like a pendulum, counting mechanically the minutes.
The dawn began. It was not like the tingling white fire, alive to its faintest wave, of dawns that she had seen. It was still and solemn.
“A l’aide, mon Roi, man Dieu!” Iona murmured drearily; and speaking, remembered the invitation: Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
What did it mean? She understood duty and obedience toward God; but an ardent worship of the whole being, a clinging of the spirit through the sense, she did not understand. It had seemed to her material and unworthy. She forgot that the sense also is the work of God. The spirit should rise above the sense, leaving it behind, despising it, she had thought; but to lift the sense also, to bathe it in that fire that burns not, to lead it by the hand, like a poor lame sister, into the healing Presence, that she knew not. Her worship dispersed itself in air.
“I will go to him!” she said. “But where? He is everywhere; therefore he is here.”
She knelt, folded her hands, and said, “Help me, O Lord! for I am in bitter need,” and said it wearily. The universal affirmation of his presence had for effect only universal negation. She did not find him.
The dawn grew. She rose from her knees, weary and faint. “How are we to know when God helps us? Perhaps when some path shall be opened for me out of this labyrinth. Is this all that religion can give me?—the patience of exhaustion, or the apathy of resignation? Is this rest? No matter! I will obey. I will ask help every day, and try to do my duty. What is meant by loving God? I cannot love all out-doors. If Christ were here as he was once upon the earth, he would not make me wait one hour with my heart all lead. If he were here! Oh, I would walk all barefoot and alone in the dark over the mountains, over the world, to hear him speak one word!”