"He told me once the three things he most wanted to see in the world were mother's letter, saying that she loved him, then mother herself, and, last of all, me. And for a long time his dearest dream has been that I could walk and he could see. So when, in the space of five or ten minutes, all the dreams came true, his heart failed."
"But," Miriam persisted, "I meant to do him harm." Her burning eyes were keenly fixed upon Barbara's face.
"Sometimes," answered the girl, gently, "I think that right must come from trying to do wrong, to make up for the countless times wrong comes from trying to do right. Father could not have had greater joy, even in heaven, than you and I gave him at the last, neither of us meaning to do it."
Human Sympathy and Love
The stern barrier that had reared itself between Miriam and her kind suddenly crumbled and fell. Warm tides of human sympathy and love came into her numb heart and ice-bound soul. The lines in her face relaxed, her hands ceased to tremble, and her burning eyes softened with the mist of tears. Her mouth quivered as she said words she had not even dreamed of saying for more than a quarter of a century:
"Will you—can you—forgive me?"
All that she needed from the dead and all they could have given her came generously from Barbara. She sprang to her feet and threw her arms around Miriam's neck. "Oh, Aunty! Aunty!" she cried, "indeed I do, not only for myself, but for father and mother, too. We don't forgive enough, we don't love enough, we're not kind enough, and that's all that's wrong with the world. There isn't time enough for bitterness—the end comes too soon."
At Peace
Miriam went upstairs, strangely uplifted, strangely at peace. She was no longer alien and apart, but one with the world. She had a sense of universal kinship—almost of brotherhood. That night she slept, for the first time in more than twenty years, without the fear of Constance.
And Constance, who was more sinned against than sinning, and whose faithful old husband had that day lain down, in joy and triumph, to rest beside her in the churchyard, came no more.