Faith started up, with first a flush and then a great sinking of colour, and steadying herself with one hand on the back of the couch looked into her messenger's face as if there she could track the missing letter or discern the cause that kept it from her. But Reuben's face discovered nothing but his sorrow and sympathy; and Faith sank back on her pillow again with a face robbed of colour beyond all the power of fever's wasting to do.
"Yes—write!" she said.
Reuben stood still, his hands lightly clasped, his heart full of thoughts he had perhaps no right to utter, if he could have found words.
"I wish you'd write, Reuben," she repeated after a moment.
"Yes, ma'am," he said, "I will. Only—dear Miss Faith! you know 'the darkness and the light are both alike to Him.'" Reuben was gone.
Faith lay for a few minutes as he had left her, and then slipped off the couch and kneeled beside it; for she felt as if the burden of the time could be borne only so. She laid her head and heart down together, and for a long time was very still; "setting her foot on the lowest step" of some of those ladders, if she could not mount by them. A foot-hold is something.
She was there yet, she had not stirred, when another foot-step in the passage and other fingers at the door made her know the approach of Dr. Harrison. Faith started up and met him standing. The doctor looked at her as he came up. So pale, so very quiet, so purely gentle, and yet with such soft strength in her eye,—he had not seen her look just so, nor anybody else, before.
"How do you do?" he said reverentially as he took her hand.
"I am—well,"—said Faith.
"Are you?" said the doctor gravely, eyeing the mark of unconquered fever and its wasting effects even on her then.—"I am very glad to hear it, indeed!"