Dorothy, who had within her the chill of her own doubt, soon yielded to Juliet’s coldness, and ceased to say anything that could be called religious.  She saw that it was not the time to speak; she must content herself with being.  Nor had it ever been any thing very definite she could say.  She had seldom gone beyond the expression of her own hope, and the desire that her friend would look up.  She could say that all the men she knew, from books or in life, of the most delicate honesty, the most genuine repentance, the most rigid self-denial, the loftiest aspiration, were Christian men; but she could neither say her knowledge of history or of life was large, nor that, of the men she knew who professed to believe, the greater part were honest, or much ashamed, or rigid against themselves, or lofty toward God.  She saw that her part was not instruction, but ministration, and that in obedience to Jesus in whom she hoped to believe.  What matter that poor Juliet denied Him?  If God commended His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us,’ He would be pleased with the cup of cold water given to one that was not a disciple.  Dorothy dared not say she was a disciple herself; she dared only say that right gladly would she become one, if she could.  If only the lovely, the good, the tender, the pure, the grand, the adorable, were also the absolutely true!—­true not in the human idea only, but in absolute fact, in divine existence!  If the story of Jesus was true, then joy to the universe, for all was well!  She waited, and hoped, and prayed and ministered.

There is a great power in quiet, for God is in it.  Not seldom He seems to lay His hand on one of His children, as a mother lays hers on the restless one in the crib, to still him.  Then the child sleeps, but the man begins to live up from the lower depths of his nature.  So the winter comes to still the plant whose life had been rushing to blossom and fruit.  When the hand of God is laid upon a man, vain moan, and struggle and complaint, it may be indignant outcry follows; but when, outwearied at last, he yields, if it be in dull submission to the inexorable, and is still, then the God at the heart of him, the God that is there or the man could not be, begins to grow.  This point Juliet had not yet reached, and her trouble went on.  She saw no light, no possible outlet.  Her cries, her longings, her agonies, could not reach even the ears, could never reach the heart of the man who had cast her off.  He believed her dead, might go and marry another, and what would be left her then?  Nothing but the death from which she now restrained herself, lest, as Dorothy had taught her, she should deny him the fruits of a softening heart and returning love.  The moment she heard that he sought another, she would seek Death and assuredly find him.  One letter she would write to leave behind her, and then go.  He should see and understand that the woman he despised for the fault of the girl, was yet capable of the noblest act of a wife:  she would die that he might live—­that it might be well with her husband.  Having entertained, comprehended and settled this idea in her mind, she became quieter.  After this, Dorothy might have spoken without stirring up so angry an opposition.  But it was quite as well she did not know it, and did not speak.