He came toward her.  He put his hands on hers.  He looked eagerly in her eyes.  He did not hesitate now; the man’s nature was roused in him.  He must make her speak,—­say that she cared.

“Don’t you care?  Bel—­you do!  You are my little wife; and the world has not anything to do with it!”

She broke away from him; she shrunk back.

“Don’t do that,” he said, imploringly.  “I’m not bad, Bel.  The world is bad.  Let us be as good and loving as we can be in it.  Don’t think me bad.”

There was not anything bad in his eyes; in his young, loving, handsome face.  Bel was not sure enough,—­strong enough,—­to denounce the evil that was using the love; to say to that which was tempting him, and her by him, as Peter’s passionate remonstrance tempted the Christ,—­“Thou art Satan.  Get thee behind me.”

Yet she shrunk, bewildered.

“I don’t know; I can’t understand.  Let me go now Mr. Hewland.”

She turned away from him, into the chamber, and reached her hand to the door as she turned, putting her fingers on its edge to close it after him.  She stood with her back to him; listening, not looking, for him to go.

He retreated, then, lingeringly, across the threshold, his eyes upon her still.  She shut the door slowly, walking backward as she pushed it to.  She had left, if not driven the devil behind her.  Yet she did not know what she had done.  She was still bewildered.  I believe the worst she thought of what had happened was that he wanted to marry her secretly, and hide her away.

“Aunt Blin!” she cried, when she felt herself all alone.  “Aunt Blin!—­She can’t have gone so very far away, quite yet!”

She went over to the closet, with her arms stretched out.

She went in, where Aunt Blin’s clothes were hanging.  She grasped the old, worn dress, that was almost warm with the wearing.  She hid her face against the sleeve, curved with the shape of the arm that had bent to its tasks in it.

“Tell me, Aunt Blin!  You can see clear, where you are.  Is there any good—­any right in it?  Ought I to tell him that I care?”

She cried, and she waited; but she got no answer there.  She came away, and sat down.

She was left all to herself in the hard, dreary world, with this doubt, this temptation to deal with.  It was her wilderness; and she did not remember, yet, the Son of God who had been there before her.

“Why do they go off so far away in that new life, out of which they might help us?”

She did not know how close the angels were.  She listened outside for them, when they were whispering already at her heart.  We need to go in; not to reach painfully up, and away,—­after that world in which we also, though blindly, dwell.

On the table lay Aunt Blin’s great Bible; beside it her glasses.

Something that Miss Euphrasia had told them one day at the chapel, came suddenly into her mind.