he thought that she might still do so, that she had grown
morbid over the fear. To-day she had seen him. She had clasped his
hand, and met his look, and listened to his friendly words, and she knew
it was well with her. They were friends whom time, and absence, and
perhaps suffering, had tried, and they would be friends always.

She did not acknowledge, in words, either her fear or her relief; but
she was glad with a sense of the old pleasure in the friendship of Allan
and Lilias; and she was saying to herself that she had been foolish and
wrong to let it slip out of her life so utterly as she had done. She
told herself that true friendship, like theirs, was too sweet and rare a
blessing to be suffered to die out, and that when they came home again
the old glad time would come back.

"I am glad that I have seen them again, very glad. And I am glad in
their happiness. I know that I am glad now."

It was very late, and she was tired after the long day, but she lingered
still, thinking of many things, and of all that the past had brought, of
all that the future might bring. Her thoughts were hopeful ones, and as
she went slowly up the stairs to her room, she was repeating Janet's
words, and making them her own.

"I will take heart and trust. If the work I have here is God-given, He
will accept it, and make me content in it, be it great or little, and I
will take heart and trust."

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN.

If, on the night of the day when Janet went away, Graeme could have had
a glimpse of her outward life for the next two years, she might have
shrunk, dismayed, from the way that lay before her. And yet when two
years and more had passed, over the cares, and fears, and
disappointments, over the change and separation which the time had
brought, she could look with calm content, nay, with grateful gladness.
They had not been eventful years--that is, they had been unmarked by any
of the especial tokens of change, of which the eye of the world is wont
to take note, the sadden and evident coming into their lives of good or
evil fortune. But Graeme had only to recall the troubled days that had
been before the time when she had sought help and comfort from her old
friend, to realise that these years had brought to her, and to some of
those she loved, a change real, deep, and blessed, and she daily thanked
God, for contentment and a quiet heart.

That which outwardly characterised the time to Graeme, that to whic