“It is hard,” said the Doctor, sadly, “but life holds many hard things for all of us. Perhaps, if we lived rightly, if our faith were stronger, death would not rend our hearts as it does. It is the common lot, the universal leveller, and soon or late it comes to us all. It remains to make our spiritual adjustment accord with the inevitable fact. There is so little that we can change, that it behooves us to confine our efforts to ourselves.”
“Life,” replied Lynn “is the pitch of the orchestra, and we are the instruments.”
Doctor Brinkerhoff nodded. “Very true. The discord and the broken string of the individual instrument do not affect the whole, except as false notes, but I think that God, knowing all things, must discern the symphony, glorious with meaning, through the discordant fragments that we play.”
So the talk went on, Lynn taking the burden of it and endeavouring always to make it cheerful. Margaret understood and loved him for it, but she, too, was sad. Iris sat like a stone, waiting, counting off the leaden hours as something to be endured, and blindly believing that rest would come.
“Everything,” said Margaret, after a long silence, “was as beautiful as it could be.”
Doctor Brinkerhoff understood at once. “Yes,” he sighed, “and I am glad. I think it was as she would have wished it to be, and I am sure she was pleased because I shielded her from the gaze of the curious at the end.” His face worked as he said it, but he took a pitiful pride in what he had done. Day by day he hugged this last service closer, because it was done through his own thought and his own understanding, and would have pleased her if she had known.
“Yes,” returned Margaret, kindly, “it was very thoughtful of you. It would never have occurred to me, and I know she would have been grateful.”
“Miss Iris?” said the Doctor, inquiringly.
The girl turned. “Yes?”