"Then how can he keep his word and forgive at all?"
"Because Christ has died for us," said Fleda eagerly;--"instead of us."
"Do you understand the justice of letting one take the place of others?"
"He was willing, Mr. Carleton," said Fleda, with a singular wistful expression that touched him.
"Still, Elfie," said he after a minute's silence,--"how could the ends of justice be answered by the death of one man in the place of millions?"
"No, Mr. Carleton, but he was God as well as man," Fleda said, with a sparkle in her eye which perhaps delayed her companion's rejoinder.
"What should induce him, Elfie," he said gently, "to do such a thing for people who had displeased him?"
"Because he loved us, Mr. Carleton."
She answered with so evident a strong and clear appreciation of what she was saying that it half made its way into Mr. Carleton's mind by the force of sheer sympathy. Her words came almost as something new.
Certainly Mr. Carleton had heard these things before, though perhaps never in a way that appealed so directly to his intelligence and his candour. He was again silent an instant, pondering, and so was Fleda.