That kind of thing Juliet had been learning to attribute to the state of her health—­had partly learned:  it is hard to learn any thing false thoroughly, for it can not so be learned.  It is true that it is often, perhaps it is generally, in troubled health, that such thoughts come first; but in nature there are facts of color that the cloudy day reveals.  So sure am I that many things which illness has led me to see are true, that I would endlessly rather never be well than lose sight of them.  “So would any madman say of his fixed idea.”  I will keep my madness, then, for therein most do I desire the noble:  and to desire what I desire, if it be but to desire, is better than to have all you offer us in the name of truth.  Through such desire and the hope of its attainment, all greatest things have been wrought in the earth:  I too have my unbelief as well as you—­I can not believe that a lie on the belief of which has depended our highest development.  You may say you have a higher to bring in.  But that higher you have become capable of by the precedent lie.  Yet you vaunt truth!  You would sink us low indeed, making out falsehood our best nourishment—­at some period of our history at least.  If, however, what I call true and high, you call false and low—­my assertion that you have never seen that of which I so speak will not help—­then is there nothing left us but to part, each go his own road, and wait the end—­which according to my expectation will show the truth, according to yours, being nothing, will show nothing.

“I can not help thinking, if we could only get up there,” Dorothy went on,—­“I mean into a life of which I can at least dream—­if I could but get my head and heart into the kingdom of Heaven, I should find that every thing else would come right.  I believe it is God Himself I want—­nothing will do but Himself in me.  Mr. Wingfold says that we find things all wrong about us, that they keep going against our will and our liking, just to drive things right inside us, or at least to drive us where we can get them put right; and that, as soon as their work is done, the waves will lie down at our feet, or if not, we shall at least walk over their crests.”

“It sounds very nice, and would comfort any body that wasn’t in trouble,” said Juliet; “but you wouldn’t care one bit for it all any more than I do, if you had pain and love like mine pulling at your heart.”

“I have seen a mother make sad faces enough over the baby at her breast,” said Dorothy.  “Love and pain seem so strangely one in this world, the wonder is how they will ever get parted.  What God must feel like, with this world hanging on to Him with all its pains and cries—!”

“It’s His own fault,” said Juliet bitterly.  “Why did He make us—­or why did He not make us good?  I’m sure I don’t know where was the use of making me!”

“Perhaps not much yet,” replied Dorothy, “but then He hasn’t made you, He hasn’t done with you yet.  He is making you now, and you don’t like it.”