"I shouldn't say so if people were always having a good time, and if they were just right and did just right. But they are not, Mr. Masters; you know they are not; even the best of them, that I see; and things like this are always happening, one way or another. If it isn't here, it is somewhere else; and if it isn't one time, it is another; and it is all confusion. I don't see what it all comes to."
"That is the thought of a moment of pain," said the minister.
"No, it is not," said Diana. "I think it often. I think it all the while. Now this very afternoon I was sitting at the door here,—you know what sort of a day it has been, Mr. Masters?"
"I know. Perfect. Just June."
"Well, I was looking at it, and feeling how lovely it was; everything perfect; and somehow all that perfection took a kind of sharp edge and hurt me. I was thinking why nothing in the world was like it, or agreed with it; nothing in human life, I mean. This afternoon, when the company was here and all the talk going on—that was like nothing out of doors all the while; and this is not like it."
There was a sigh, deep drawn, that came through the minister's lips; then he spoke cheerfully—"Ay, God's works have parted company somehow."
"Parted—?" said Diana curiously.
"Yes. You remember surely that when he had made all things at first, he beheld them very good."
"Well, they are not very good now; not all of them."
"Whose fault is that?"