Uncle Titus sat very still.  His hat was in one hand, and both together held his cane, planted on the floor between his feet.  Over hat and cane leaned his gray head, thoughtfully.  If Desire could have seen his eyes, she would have found in them an expression that she had never supposed could be there at all.

She had not so much spoken to Uncle Titus, in these last words of hers, as she had irresistibly spoken out that which was in her.  She wanted Uncle Titus’s good common sense and sense of right to help her decide; but the inward ache and doubt and want, out of which grew her indecisions,—­these showed themselves forth at that moment simply because they must, with no expectation of a response from him.  It might have been a stone wall that she cried against; she would have cried all the same.

Then it was over, and she was half ashamed, thinking it was of no use, and he would not understand; perhaps that he would only set the whole down to nerves and fidgets and contrariness, and give her no common sense that she wanted, after all.

But Uncle Titus spoke, slowly; much as if he, too, were speaking out involuntarily, without thought of his auditor.  People do so speak, when the deep things are stirred; they speak into the deep that answereth unto itself,—­the deep that reacheth through all souls, and all living, whether souls feel into it and know of it or not.

“The real things are inside,” he said.  “The real world is the inside world. God is not up, nor down, but in the midst.”

Then he looked up at Desire.

“What is real of your life is living inside you now.  That is something.  Look at it and see what it is.”

“Discontent.  Misery.  Failure.”

“Sense of failure.  Well.  Those are good things.  The beginning of better.  Those are live things, at any rate.”

Desire had never thought of that.

Now she sat still awhile.

Then she said,—­“But we can’t be much, without doing it.  I suppose we are put into a world of outsides for something.”

“Yes.  To find out what it means.  That’s the inside of it.  And to help make the outside agree with the in, so that it will be easier for other people to find out.  That is the ’kingdom come and will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’  Heaven is the inside,—­the truth of things.”

“Why, I never knew”—­began Desire, astonished.  She had almost finished aloud, as her mother had done in her own mind.  She never knew that Uncle Oldways was “pious.”

“Never knew that was what it meant?  What else can it mean?  What do you suppose the resurrection was, or is?”

Desire answered with a yet larger look of wonder, only in the dim light it could not be wholly seen.

“The raising up of the dead; Christ coming up out of the tomb.”