Her self-reliance seemed gone. As the passion of her voiceless grief swayed and fairly frightened her, there stole suddenly into her heart the memory of the last message: "Claire needs to trust less to herself, and lean on Christ."
CHAPTER III.
OUT IN THE WORLD.
I AM not sure that I would, even if I could, give you a detailed account of the days which followed.
What is the use of trying to live pain over again on paper? Yet some people need practice of this sort to enable them to have any idea of the sorrows of other hearts.
I wonder if you ever went through a large, elegantly furnished house, from room to room, and dismantled it? Packing away this thing as far as possible from curious eyes, soiling the velvet, or the satin, or the gilding of it, perhaps, with bitter tears while you worked; marking that thing with a ticket containing two words which had become hateful to you, "For sale;" hiding away some special treasure in haste, lest the unexpected sight of it might break a heart that was just now bearing all it could. Has such experience ever been yours? Then you know all about it, and can in imagination follow Claire Benedict from attic to basement of her father's house; and no words of mine can make the picture plainer. If it is something you have never experienced, or even remotely touched, you may think you are sympathetic, and you may gravely try to be, but nothing that printed words can say will be apt to help you much in realizing the bitterness of such hours.
Isn't it a blessed thing that it is so? Suppose we actually bore on our hearts the individual griefs of the world? How long would our poor bodies be in breaking under the strain? "He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows." It took the Infinite to do this.
Through all the miseries of the two weeks during which the process of dismantling went on, Claire Benedict sustained her character for self-reliance and systematic energy. She stood between her mother and the world. She interviewed carmen, and porters, and auctioneers, and talked calmly about the prices of things, the thought of selling which made her flesh fairly quiver.
She superintended the moving of heavy furniture, and the packing of delicate glasses and vases, after they had been chosen from the home treasures at private sale.