"Yes—but"—
"And he it is that can make happy those who know him. Do you remember he said, 'He that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst'?"
Looking up at the speaker and following his words, they somehow struck
Diana rather hard. Her lip suddenly trembled, and she looked down.
"You do not understand it," said the minister, "but you must believe it. Poor hungry lamb, seeking pasture where there is none,—where it is withered,—come to Christ!"
"Do you mean," said Diana, struggling for voice and self-command, but unable to look up, for the minister's hand was on her shoulder and his words had been very tenderly spoken,—"do you mean, that when everything is withered, he can make it green again?"
The minister answered in the words of David, which were the words of the Lord: "'He shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springeth out of the earth by clear shining after rain.'"
Diana bent her head lower. Could such refreshment and renewal of her own wasted nature ever come to pass? She did not believe it; yet perhaps there was life yet at the roots of the grass which scented the rain. The words swept over as the breath of the south wind.
"'The light of a morning without clouds'"—she repeated when she could speak.
"Christ is all that, to those who know him," the minister said.
"Then I do not know him," said Diana.