“Why don’t you, then?” said Courtland, getting up and going to the closet for his overcoat.  “It’s up to you, you know.  You can!  God can’t do it for you, and of course there’s nothing doing till you’ve taken that step.  I found that out!”

“But how do you reconcile things, calamities, disasters, war, suffering, that poor old woman lying on her attic bed alone?  How do you reconcile that with the goodness of God?”

“I don’t reconcile it.  It isn’t my business.  I leave that to God.  If I understood all the whys and wherefores of how this universe is run I’d be great enough to be a God myself.”

“But if God is omniscient I can’t see how He can let some things go on!  He must be limited in power or He’d never let some things happen if He’s a good God!” Wittemore’s voice had a plaintive sound.

“Well, how do you know that?  In the first place, how can you be sure what is a calamity?  And say, did it ever strike you that some of the things we blame on God are really up to us?  He’s handed over His power for us to do things, and we haven’t seen it that way; so the things go undone and God is charged with the consequences.”

“I wish I could believe that!” said Wittemore.

“You can!  When you really want to, enough, you will!  Come on, let’s get that prayer down to the old lady!  I’m sort of an amateur yet, but I’ll do my best.”

They went out into the mist and murk of a spring thaw.  Wittemore never forgot that night’s experience—­the prayer, and the walk home again through the fog.  The old woman died at dawning.

Courtland spent much time thinking about Gila these days.  His whole soul was wrapped up in the desire that she might understand.  He was longing for her; idealizing her; thinking of her in her innocent beauty, her charming ways; wondering how she would meet him the next time, what he should say to her; living upon her brief, alluring notes that came to him from time to time like fitful rose petals blown from a garden where he longed to be; but yet in a way it was a relief to have her gone until he could settle the great perplexity that was in his mind concerning her.

Gila prolonged her absence by a trip South with her father, and so it was several weeks before Courtland saw her again.

There seemed to be a settled sadness over his soul when he prayed about her, and when at last she returned and summoned him to her he was no nearer a solution of his difficulty than when he had last left her.

The hour before he went to her he spent in Stephen’s room, turning over the leaves of Stephen’s Bible.  When he rose at last to go he turned again to this verse which had caught his eye among the marked verses that were always so interesting to him because they seemed to have been landmarks in Stephen’s life: 

     My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest.

It almost startled him, so well did it seem to suit his need.  He read on a few verses: