All at once, as if waked from an eternity of unconsciousness, she found herself, by no will of her own, with no power to say nay, present to herself—­a target for sorrow to shoot at, a tree for the joy-birds to light upon and depart—­a woman, scorned of the man she loved, bearing within her another life, which by no will of its own, and with no power to say nay, must soon become aware of its own joys and sorrows, and have no cause to bless her for her share in its being.  Was there no one to answer for it?  Surely there must be a heart-life somewhere in the universe, to whose will the un-self-willed life could refer for the justification of its existence, for its motive, for the idea of it that should make it seem right to itself—­to whom it could cry to have its divergence from that idea rectified!  Was she not now, she thought, upon her silent way to her own deathbed, walking, walking, the phantom of herself, in her own funeral?  What if, when the bitterness of death was past, and her child was waking in this world, she should be waking in another, to a new life, inevitable as the former—­another, yet the same?  We know not whence we came—­why may we not be going whither we know not?  We did not know we were coming here, why may we not be going there without knowing it—­this much more open-eyed, more aware that we know we do not know?  That terrible morning, she had come this way, rushing swiftly to her death:  she was caught and dragged back from Hades, to be there-after—­now, driven slowly toward it, like an ox to the slaughter!  She could not avoid her doom—­she must encounter that which lay before her.  That she shrunk from it with fainting terror was nothing; on she must go!  What an iron net, what a combination of all chains and manacles and fetters and iron-masks and cages and prisons was this existence—­at least to a woman, on whom was laid the burden of the generations to follow!  In the lore of centuries was there no spell whereby to be rid of it? no dark saying that taught how to make sure death should be death, and not a fresh waking?  That the future is unknown, assures only danger!  New circumstances have seldom to the old heart proved better than the new piece of cloth to the old garment.

Thus meditated Juliet.  She was beginning to learn that, until we get to the heart of life, its outsides will be forever fretting us; that among the mere garments of life, we can never be at home.  She was hard to teach, but God’s circumstance had found her.

When they came near the brow of the hollow, Dorothy ran on before, to see that all was safe.  Lisbeth was of course the only one in the house.  The descent was to Juliet like the going down to the gates of Death.

Polwarth, who had been walking behind with Ruth, stepped to her side the moment Dorothy left her.  Looking up in her face, with the moonlight full upon his large features, he said,

“I have been feeling all the way, ma’am, as if Another was walking beside us—­the same who said, ’I am with you always even to the end of the world.’  He could not have meant that only for the few that were so soon to follow Him home; He must have meant it for those also who should believe by their word.  Becoming disciples, all promises the Master made to His disciples are theirs.”