THE TWILIGHT GUESTS
"Then she left me for the first time," said the old man slowly. "For the first time. She went alone and prayed. Oh Rachel, my dear, dear wife, I could not go with you to God! I think even we go best alone! I said 'It cannot be! He cannot let it come! I have done all my life as best I knew how, and is this my reward?' And I heard her crying, and I wished I had never lived."
"But not for long?" said the other.
The old man smiled through his tears.
"No, no, not for long!" he said. "When Rachel saw that I was weak she grew strong. It is strange, but women are the strongest then. And she showed me the folly and wickedness of throwing away my faith because the Most Faithful had taken away my child. And she brought me my little daughters and set them on my knees and put her arms around my neck. So I grew comforted. And there have come other sons—Arthur and John. But he—ah, Rachel! Little we thought when we laid him on the grass under the tree and measured him with goldenrod, that he would so soon lie there for all our lives!"
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