the dearness of it. She felt his arms tightening round her.
“Yes, you do, honey. You can’t help liking God. He is Love itself, you know. You mustn’t mix Him up with Ellen Greene’s God, of course.”
Emily didn’t know exactly what Father meant. But all at once she found that she wasn’t afraid any longer—and the bitterness had gone out of her sorrow, and the unbearable pain out of her heart. She felt as if love was all about her and around her, breathed out from some great, invisible, hovering Tenderness. One couldn’t be afraid or bitter where love was—and love was everywhere. Father was going through the door—no, he was going to lift a curtain—she liked that thought better, because a curtain wasn’t as hard and fast as a door—and he would slip into that world of which the flash had given her glimpses. He would be there in its beauty—never very far away from her. She could bear anything if she could only feel that Father wasn’t very far away from her—just beyond that wavering curtain.
Douglas Starr held her until she fell asleep; and then in spite of his weakness he managed to lay her down in her little bed.
“She will love deeply—she will suffer terribly—she will have glorious moments to compensate—as I have had. As her mother’s people deal with her, so may God deal with them,” he murmured brokenly.
Douglas Starr lived two weeks more. In after years when the pain had gone out of their recollection, Emily thought they were the most precious of her memories. They were beautiful weeks—beautiful and not sad. And one night, when he was lying on the
