Faith came to the side of the bed. Little her quiet face shewed how she was trembling. In her soft sweet way she asked the sick woman how she did. And Mrs. Custers turned her head a little, and gazed up into the blooming face with strange, eager, feverish eyes—eyes that thirsted, but with no bodily thirst. Then she closed them again and turned her face away, but said nothing.
"Have you been sick long?" asked Faith.
She did not answer, then; though as if the tones of Faith's voice were making their way, there came presently a slight quiver of the face, and a bright drop or two that the closed eyelids could not quite keep back. But she was at that point of time where the fear of man has lost its power,—where the doctor loses his supremacy and visiters their interest: where men and things are pushed like shadows into the background, and the mind can see no object save "the great white throne." This was what the silence expressed,—it was not dislike, nor churlishness; but those surface questions failed to reach her where she stood. The next gentle and tender "What is the matter?"—was so spoken that it found her even there. Her eyes came back to Faith's face with the sort of look they had given before. And then she spoke.
"Where would you be going if you were lying where I be?"
Faith heeded not the doctor then, nor anything else in the world. She waited an instant; she had drawn herself up on hearing the question; then leaning forward again she said slowly, tenderly,
"I should be going—to be happy with my divine Redeemer. Are not you?"
"What makes you think you would?"
"Because I have his word for it," said Faith. "He says that whoever believes in him shall not perish, and that every one that loves him shall be with him where he is;—I believe in him and love him with my whole heart; and I know he is true. He will not cast me away." Slowly, clearly, the words were spoken; so that they might every one enter and be received by the ears that heard.
The woman looked at her,—scanned her, examined her,—looked down towards the foot of the bed at the doctor—then back at Faith.
"Do you believe all that?" she said.