against the sleeve, curved with the shape of the arm that had
bent to its tasks in it.

"Tell me, Aunt Blin! You can see clear, where you are. Is there any
good--any right in it? Ought I to tell him that I care?"

She cried, and she waited; but she got no answer there. She came
away, and sat down.

She was left all to herself in the hard, dreary world, with this
doubt, this temptation to deal with. It was her wilderness; and she
did not remember, yet, the Son of God who had been there before her.

"Why do they go off so far away in that new life, out of which they
might help us?"

She did not know how close the angels were. She listened outside for
them, when they were whispering already at her heart. We need to go
_in_; not to reach painfully up, and away,--after that world in
which we also, though blindly, dwell.

On the table lay Aunt Blin's great Bible; beside it her glasses.

Something that Miss Euphrasia had told them one day at the chapel,
came suddenly into her mind.

"The angels are always near us when we are reading the Word, because
they read, always, the living Word in heaven."

Was that the way? Might she enter so, and find them?

She moved slowly to the table.

It was growing dark. She struck a match and lit the gas, turning it
low. She laid back the leaves of the large volume, to the latter
portion. She opened it in Matthew,--to the nineteenth chapter.

When she had read that, she knew what she was to do.

She heard nothing more from Morris Hewland that night.

In the morning, early, she had her room bright and ready for the
day. The light was calm and clear about her. The shadows were all
gone.

She opened her door, and sat down, waiting, before the fire. Did
she think of that night when she had had on the rose-colored silk,
and had set the door ajar? Something in her had made her ashamed of
that. She was not ashamed--she had no misgiving--of this that she
was going to do now.

She was all alone; she had no other place to wait in she had no one
to tell her anything. She was going to do a plain, right thing,
whether it was just what anybody else would do, or not. She never
even asked herself that question.

She heard Mr. Sparrow, with his hop and step, come down over the
stairs. He always came down first of all. Then for another half
hour, she sat still. At the end of that time, Morris Hewland's door
unlatched and closed again.

Her heart beat quick. She stood up, with her face to