‘Oh, not so; not so!’ she cried, ’but that He should change their hearts.’

‘Yet that too against their will,’ he said.

The little Pilgrim paused upon the way; and her heart rose against her companion, who spoke things so hard to be received, and that seemed to dishonor the work of the Lord.  But she remembered that it could not be so, and paused before she spoke, and looked up at him with eyes that were full of wonder and almost of fear.  ‘Then must they perish?’ she said, ‘and must her heart break?’ and her voice sank low for pity and sorrow.  Though she was herself among the blessed, yet the thorns and briers of the earth caught at her garments and pierced her tender feet.

‘Little sister,’ said the Sage, ’to us who are born of the earth it is hard to remember that the child belongs not first to the parents, nor the husband to the wife, nor the wife to the husband, but that all are the children of the Father.  And He is just; He will not neglect the little one because of those prayers which the father and the mother pour forth to Him, although they cry with anguish and with tears.  Nor will He break His great law and violate the nature He has made, and compel His own child to what it wills not and loves not.  The woman is comforted in the breaking of her heart; but those whom she loves, are not they also the children of the Father, who loves them more than she does?  And each is to Him as if there were not another in the world.  Nor is there any other in the world,—­for none can come between the Father and the child.’

A smile came upon the little Pilgrim’s face, yet she trembled.  ’It is dim before me,’ she said, ’and I cannot see clearly.  Oh, if the time would but hasten, that our Lord might come, and all struggles be ended, and the darkness vanish away!’

‘He will come when all things are ready,’ said the Sage; and as they went upon their way be showed her other sights, and the mysteries of the heart of man, and the great patience of our Lord.

It happened to them suddenly to perceive in their way a man returning home.  These are words that are sweet to all who have lived upon the earth and known its ways; but far, far were they from that meaning which is sweet.  The dark hours had passed, and men had slept; and the night was over.  The sun was rising in the sky, which was keen and clear with the pleasure of the morning.  The air was fresh with the dew, and the birds awaking in the trees, and the breeze so sweet that it seemed to blow from heaven; and to the two travellers it seemed almost in the joy of the new day as if the Lord had already come.  But here was one who proved that it was not so.  He had not slept all the night, nor had night been silent to him nor dark, but full of glaring light and noise and riot; his eyes were red with fever and weariness, and his soul was sick within him, and the morning looked him in the face and upbraided him as a sister might have upbraided him, who loved him.