“Take her away!  She has killed me!  She wants me to die! I know!  Take her away!”

And Julia went to her own room and shut herself up in darkness and in wretchedness, but in all that miserable night there came to her not one regret that she had reached her hand to the departing August.

The neighbor-women came in and pretended to do something for the invalid, but really they sat by the kitchen-stove and pumped Cynthy Ann and the doctor, and managed in some way to connect Julia with her mother’s illness, and shook their heads.  So that when Julia crept down-stairs at midnight, in hope of being useful, she found herself looked at inquisitively, and felt herself to be such an object of attention that she was glad to take the advice of Cynthy Ann and find refuge in her own room.  On the stairs she met Jonas, who said as she passed: 

“Don’t fret yourself, little turtle-dove.  Don’t pay no ’tention to ole Ketchup.  Your ma won’t die, not even with his corn-sweats to waft her on to glory.  You done your duty to-night like one of Fox’s martyrs, and like George Washi’ton with his little cherry-tree and hatchet.  And you’ll git your reward, if not in the next world, you’ll have it in this.”

Julia lay down awhile, and then sat up, looking out into the darkness.  Perhaps God was angry with her for loving August; perhaps she was making an idol of him.  When Julia came to think that her love for August was in antagonism to the love of God, she did not hesitate which she would choose.  All the best of her nature was loyal to August, whom she “had seen,” as the Apostle John has it.  She could not reason it out, but a God who seemed to be in opposition to the purest and best emotion of her heart was a God she could not love.  August and the love of August were known quantities.  God and the love of God were unknown, and the God of whom Cynthy spoke (and of whom many a mistaken preacher has spoken), that was jealous of Mrs. Pearson’s love for her baby, and that killed it because it was his rival, was not a God that she could love without being a traitor to all the good that God had put in her heart.  The God that was keeping August away from her because he was jealous of the one beautiful thing in her life was a Moloch, and she deliberately determined that she would not worship or love him.  The True God, who is a Father, and who is not Supreme Selfishness, doing all for His own glory, as men falsely declare; the True God—­who does all things for the good of others—­loved her, I doubt not, for refusing to worship the Conventional Deity thus presented to her mind.  Even as He has pitied many a mother that rebelled against the Governor of the Universe, because she was told the Governor of the Universe, in a petty seeking for his own glory, had taken away her “idols.”