She looked up, white; she was a weak, weak woman, sick for her natural food of love.

“Is it my work?”

“It is your work.  Listen to me, Margaret,” softly.  “Who cares for you?  You stand alone to-night.  There is not a single human heart that calls you nearest and best.  Shiver, if you will,—­it is true.  The man you wasted your soul on left you in the night and cold to go to his bride,—­is sitting by her now, holding her hand in his.”

He waited a moment, looking down at her, until she should understand.

“Do you think you deserved this of God?  I know that yonder on the muddy road you looked up to Him, and knew it was not just; that you had done right, and this was your reward.  I know that for these two years you have trusted in the Christ you worship to make it right, to give you your heart’s desire.  Did He do it?  Did He hear your prayer?  Does He care for your weak love, when the nations of the earth are going down?  What is your poor hope to Him, when the very land you live in is a wine-press that will be trodden some day by the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God?  O Christ!—­if there be a Christ,—­help me to save it!”

He looked up,—­his face white with pain.  After a time he said to her,—­

“Help me, Margaret!  Your prayer was selfish; it was not heard.  Give up your idle hope that Christ will aid you.  Swear to me, this night when you have lost all, to give yourself to this work.”

The storm had been dark and windy:  it cleared now slowly, the warm summer rain falling softly, the fresh blue stealing broadly from behind the gray.  It seemed to Margaret like a blessing; for her brain rose up stronger, more healthful.

“I will not swear,” she said, weakly.  “I think He heard my prayer.  I think He will answer it.  He was a man, and loved as we do.  My love is not selfish; it is the best gift God has given me.”

Knowles went slowly with her to the house.  He was not baffled.  He knew that the struggle was yet to come; that, when she was alone, her faith in the far-off Christ would falter; that she would grasp at this work, to fill her empty hands and starved heart, if for no other reason,—­to stifle by a sense of duty her unutterable feeling of loss.  He was keenly read in woman’s heart, this Knowles.  He left her silently, and she passed through the dark passage to her own room.

Putting her damp shawl off, she sat down on the floor, leaning her head on a low chair,—­one her father had given her for a Christmas gift when she was little.  How fond Holmes and her father used to be of each other!  Every Christmas he spent with them.  She remembered them all now.  “He was sitting by her now, holding her hand in his.”  She said that over to herself, though it was not hard to understand.

After a long time, her mother came with a candle to the door.

“Good-night, Margaret.  Why, your hair is wet, child!”