"Trusting in God."
"God? What has He done with my children?"
She seemed to be wandering. Her voice had grown very gentle.
"You must see," she went on to say, "that I cannot stay like this. You never had any children; but I am a mother: that makes a difference. One cannot judge of a thing unless he knows what it is like. Did you ever have any children?"
"No," replied Tellmarch.
"But I have. Can I live without my children? I should like to be told why my children are not here. Something is happening, but what it is I cannot understand."
"Come," said Tellmarch, "you are feverish again. You mustn't talk any more."
She looked at him and was silent.
And from that day she kept silence again.
This implicit obedience was more than Tellmarch desired. She spent hour after hour crouching at the foot of the old tree, like one stupefied. She pondered in silence,—that refuge of simple souls who have sounded the gloomy depths of woe. She seemed to give up trying to understand. After a certain point despair becomes unintelligible to the despairing.