“What are my sufferings compared to my sins—compared to the holiness of God?”
“Do you long very much to see heaven—to know what it is like?” I said, after we had been silent a while.
“No; I can’t say I do,” she replied. “I only long to see God.”
“Do you realize at all what the vision will be?” I asked.
“No,” she said, and her black eyes, so deep-sunk in their sockets, were lifted up with an expression of eager, tender yearning that was indescribable. “I realize nothing; but when I try to do so, I feel the most wonderful peace stealing over me—a sense of safety, of rest, of happiness. I can’t describe it; but it is like a foretaste of the bliss of Paradise—to see God! That is what makes Paradise!”
She was speaking rather to herself than to me, in a low voice, scarcely above a murmur. I felt that God was very near to her; the low-roofed attic was filled with an august, unseen Presence that touched us with a thrilling solemnity.
Presently I said: “You will remember me when you see God, will you not? You will pray for me by my name?”
“Oh! yes, that I will,” she answered, with a loving smile; “after my mother, you are the first person I shall name. I shall tell our Lord how kind you have been to me for his sake; I shall beg him to pay it all back to you.”
“There is very little to pay,” I said; “it has been a privilege and a delight to me to come and see you. But I will ask you to do some commissions for me the first thing when you get into heaven.”
I gave her the commissions. There were three. Millicent Gray’s conversion was the second on the list. She promised me solemnly that she would execute them, either in heaven, if she was so happy as to go there straight, or else in Purgatory, if this were possible.