Mr. Loretz was now quite broken down. He passed his handkerchief across his face again, and this time made no answer.
Then the mother, with lips firmly compressed, and eyes bent steadily upon the floor, and forehead crumpled somewhat, sat and held her peace.
At last the father said, in a low tone that gave to his strong voice an awful pathos, "How can the child bear it, Anna? for she loves Spener well—and to love him well!"
"Oh, father," said the wife, who had by this time sounded the depth of this tribulation, and was already ascending, "how did we bear it when we had to give up Gabriel, and Jacob, and dear little Carl?"
"For me," said the man, rising and looking over the piazza rail into the gay little flower-garden beneath—"for me all that was nothing to this."
"O my boys!" the mother cried.
"We know that they went home to a heavenly Parent, and to more delight and honor than all the earth could give them," the father said.
"It rent the heart, Frederick, but into the gaping wound the balm of Gilead was poured."
"There is no man alive to be compared with Albert Spener."
"I know of one—but one."