“Oh Abbie, Abbie, how can you bear it—­how can you live?” burst forth from the heart of this friend who had come to comfort this afflicted one!

There was a little bit of silence now, and a touching tremble to the voice when it was heard again.

“‘The Lord knoweth them that are his.’  I try to remember that.  Christ knows it all, and he loves me, and he is all-powerful; and yet he leads me through this dark road; therefore it must be right.”

“But,” said Ester, raising her eyes and staying her tears for very amazement, “I do not understand—­I do not see.  How can you be so calm, so submissive, at least just now—­so soon—­and you were to have been married to-day?”

The blood rolled in great purple waves over neck and cheek and brow, and then receded, leaving a strange, almost death-like, pallor behind it.  The small hands were tightly clasped, with a strange mixture of pain and devotion in the movement, and the white lips moved for a moment, forming words that met no mortal ear—­then the sweet, low, tender voice sounded again.

“Dear Ester, I pray.  There is no other way.  I pray all the time.  I keep right by my Savior.  There is just a little, oh, a very little, vale of flesh between him and between my—­my husband and myself.  Jesus loves me, Ester.  I know it now just as well as I did yesterday.  I do not and can not doubt him.”

A mixture of awe and pain and astonishment kept Ester moveless and silent, and Abbie spoke no more for some moments.  Then it was a changed, almost bright voice.

“Ester do you remember we stood together alone for a moment yesterday?  I will tell you what he said, the last words that were intended for just me only, that I shall hear for a little while; they are my words, you know, but I shall tell them to you so you may see how tender Christ is, even in his most solemn chastenings.  ‘See here,’ he said, ’I will give you a word to keep until we meet in the morning:  The Lord watch between thee and me while we are absent one from another.’  I have been thinking, while I sat here this morning, watching the coming of this new day, which you know is his first day in heaven, that perhaps it will be on some such morning of beauty as this that my long, long day will dawn, and that I will say to him, as soon as ever I see his face again:  ’The word was a good one; the Lord has watched between us, and the night is gone.’  Think of it, Ester.  I shall surely say that some day—­’some summer morning.’”

The essence of sweetness and the sublimity of faith which this young Christian threw into these jubilant words can not be repeated on paper; but, thank God, they can in the heart—­they are but the echo of those sure and everlasting words:  “My grace is sufficient for thee.”  As for Ester, who had spent her years groveling in the dust of earth, it was the recital of such an experience as she had not deemed it possible for humanity to reach.  And still she knelt immovable and silent, and Abbie broke the silence yet again.