CHAPTER XXX
ETHEL had been to her uncle's grave one afternoon, and was returning through the wood which lay between the farmhouse and the village when she met Paul.
“I've just been up with some flowers,” she said. “Oh, it is so sad! I had a good cry.”
“I have no doubt it made you feel better,” he said, looking at her tenderly. “Nature has made us that way.”
“I am afraid I became rather despondent,” she answered. “Oh, Paul, I wish I had all your beautiful faith! You have actually reconciled me to poor dear Jennie's death. I can already see that it was best. It has made me kinder and broader in many ways. Do you know, Paul, there are times when I am fully conscious of her presence—I don't mean in the ordinary, spiritualistic sense, but something—I don't know how to put it—but something like the highest mental essence of my dear cousin seems to fold me in an embrace that is actually transporting. I find myself full of tears and joy at the same time, and almost dazed with the indescribable reality of it.”
“Many sensitive persons have that experience in sorrow,” Paul said, “and I am obliged to think there is some psychic fact beneath it. There is something undoubtedly uplifting in a great grief. It is a certain cure for spiritual blindness. It tears the scales of matter from our eyes as nothing else can do.”
“I can't, however, keep from being despondent over my poor uncle,” Ethel sighed, as she agreed with him. “Oh, Paul, he really wasn't prepared. He plunged into the dark void without the faintest faith or hope.”
Paul gravely shook his head and smiled. “To believe that is to doubt that the great principle of life is love. We cannot conceive of even an earthly father's punishing one of his children for being blind, much less the Creator of us all. Your uncle through his whole life was blind to the truth. Had he seen it, his awakening would have been here instead of there, that is all.”
“Oh, how comforting, how sweetly comforting!” Ethel sobbed. There was a fallen tree near the path, and she turned aside and sat down. She folded her hands in her lap, while the tears stood in her eyes. “Paul,” she said, suddenly, “you are very happy, aren't you? You must be—you have so much to make you so.”