along my life now, burning out all the
roughnesses--crushing me down. It's been a heavy weight to carry--the
burden of salvation. It is such a heavy weight that one can't carry
anything else. I tried to carry myself, and prides and hungers and love
for you. All of them had to be blazed out.--No--not the love. That could
not go. That and the courage will go on; pity perhaps will go, for only
our bodies are pitiful. But the love is deathless. God's banner over me
was love. I think I've read that somewhere His footmarks over my life
were love. I've not read that. I had to find it out--slowly, hungrily,
painfully, strivingly, because I've always been such a fool. But just
this minute I've seen that I've been God's Fool--and God is Love.

* * * * *

The sun came up behind the pines on Ben Grief, golden and silver in the
April morning. Very faintly came the voices of the fishermen; in the
next room she heard small, busy sounds; two faint falls made her smile.
Andrew had mechanically put on his shoes, thought better of it and
kicked them off again. She heard him creep along the landing to her door
and listen. When she tried to call him to come and kiss her she found
that her voice had died. She heard him say, quietly:

"Mummy's fast asleep," and smiled again as she felt that he was running
through the unbarred door shrieking and laughing in the delight of the
soft air, the dancing sea, the kindly sun. She knew that he had not
washed his face, and worried a little about it, and then smiled again.

His voice grew fainter. She tried to lift her hand to fold her letter.
It felt as though it were miles away from her, and too heavy to move.

"Why, I'm dying now," she thought, and was surprised to find it such an
ordinary, unvolitional thing to do. It was very good to do something
unvolitional, very restful.--Little snappings sounded in her ears, and
distant crashings and thunders as of a storm perceived by a deaf man who
can see and understand without hearing.

She thought very clearly of Death for a moment, and then of God. She had
often thought of Death and of God, and was surprised to find that she
had been wrong about both.

"I thought--He never gave you--anesthetics--" she told herself. "Why,
that's what death is--"

Then came the clear vision of God--not the Great Being with devastating
feet at all: He seemed to be like the surgeon in Sydney, for a moment,
very sure of His work, very stro