“We’ll talk about it afterward.  Come now.”

With Dorothy’s arm round her waist, Juliet climbed trembling to the warmer room.  On a rickety wooden chair, Dorothy made her sit in the sunshine, while she went and gathered chips and shavings and bits of wood left by the workmen.  With these she soon kindled a fire in the rusty grate.  Then she took off Juliet’s shoes and stockings, and put her own upon her.  She made no resistance, only her eyes followed Dorothy’s bare feet going to and fro, as if she felt something was wrong, and had not strength to inquire into it.

But Dorothy’s heart rebuked her for its own lightness.  It had not been so light for many a day.  It seemed as if God was letting her know that He was there.  She spread her cloak on a sunny spot of the floor, made Juliet lie down upon it, put a bundle of shavings under her head, covered her with her own cloak, which she had dried at the fire, and was leaving the room.

“Where are you going, Dorothy?” cried Juliet, seeming all at once to wake up.

“I am going to fetch your husband, dear,” answered Dorothy.

She gave a great cry, rose to her knees, and clasped Dorothy round hers.

“No, no, no!” she screamed.  “You shall not.  If you do, I swear I will run straight to the pond.”

Notwithstanding the wildness of her voice and look, there was an evident determination in both.

“I will do nothing you don’t like, dear,” said Dorothy.  “I thought that was the best thing I could do for you.”

“No! no! no! any thing but that!”

“Then of course I won’t.  But I must go and get you something to eat.”

“I could not swallow a mouthful; it would choke me.  And where would be the good of it, when life is over!”

“Don’t talk like that, dear.  Life can’t be over till it is taken from us.”

“Ah, you would see it just as I do, if you knew all!”

“Tell me all, then.”

“Where is the use, when there is no help?”

“No help!” echoed Dorothy.—­The words she had so often uttered in her own heart, coming from the lips of another, carried in them an incredible contradiction.—­Could God make or the world breed the irreparable?—­“Juliet,” she went on, after a little pause, “I have often said the same myself, but—­”

“You!” interrupted Juliet; “you who always professed to believe!”

Dorothy’s ear could not distinguish whether the tone was of indignation or of bitterness.

“You never heard me, Juliet,” she answered, “profess any thing.  If my surroundings did so for me, I could not help that.  I never dared say I believed any thing.  But I hope—­and, perhaps,” she went on with a smile, “seeing Hope is own sister to Faith, she may bring me to know her too some day.  Paul says——­”

Dorothy had been brought up a dissenter, and never said St. this one or that, any more than the Christians of the New Testament.