"No," said papa, laughing; "that is very true. Then if you liked somebody who was not that sort of a Christian, Daisy, you would not refuse to marry him?"
"Papa," I said with difficulty, - "I think I ought."
The words struck upon my own heart, I cannot tell how heavily. But they were forced from me. When the question came, it had to be answered. I suppose the matter had really been in my mind before, vaguely, and I had refused to look at it, while yet I could not help seeing its proportions and bearing; so that when papa asked me I knew what I must say. But the spoken words stunned me, for all that.
"I suppose," said papa, not lightly, "you will think so till you are tried; and then you will take a woman's privilege of changing your mind. But if the trial is to come in that shape, Daisy, it is very far off. There are no men of your way of thinking, my pet."
He kissed me as he said it; and I could not for a moment speak.
"But we will go to Palestine, papa?"
"Yes, we will go to Palestine. That is fixed. You and I will take a holiday, and for a while give up all thoughts of marrying and giving in marriage."
CHAPTER XIV.
FLIGHT
I am coming to the holiday of my life; a time that seems, as I look back to it, like a chequered mosaic of pleasure pieces laid in bright colours, all in harmony, and making out a pattern of beauty. It is odd I should speak so; for I have known other holidays, when fewer clouds were in my sky and fewer life-shadows stretching along the landscape. Nevertheless, this is how it looks to me in the retrospect; and to write of it, is like setting the pins of that mosaic work over again. Not one of them is lost in my memory.