"Should I not?" said Eleanor, "when he loved me, and gave himself for me, that he might bring me from myself and sin to know him and be happy."
"And you are happy, are you not?" said Mrs. Esthwaite, looking at her as if it were something that she had come to believe against evidence. There was good evidence for it now, in Eleanor's smile; which would bear studying.
"There is nothing but happiness where Christ is."
"But I couldn't understand it—those places where you are going are so dreadful;—and why you should go there at all—"
"No, you do not understand, and cannot till you try it. I have such joy in the love of Christ sometimes, that I wish for nothing so much in the world, as to bring others to know what I know!"
There was power in the lighting face, which Mrs. Esthwaite gazed at and wondered.
"I think I am willing to go anywhere and do anything, which my King may give me, in that service."
"To be sure," said Mrs. Esthwaite, as if adding a convincing corollary from her own mind,—"you have some other reason to wish to get there—to the Islands, I mean."
That brought a flood of crimson over Eleanor's face; she let go her hostess's hands and turned away.
"But there was something else I wanted to ask," said Mrs. Esthwaite hastily. "Egbert said—Are you very tired, my dear?"