Her voice broke and she swallowed hard before she could go on.
"I've always thought death wouldn't be so bad if one could die as dear Beth did, in 'Little Women.' Don't you remember how sweetly and gently she faded away, and so slowly that there was no great shock when the end came? She had time to get used to the idea of going, and to say things that would comfort them after she was gone. But to be snatched away like Mr. Locksley--without a moment's warning--it seems too dreadful! I don't see how God can let such cruel things happen."
"But think, little daughter," urged Mrs. Ware gently, "how much he was spared. No long illness, no racking pain, no lingering with the consciousness that he was a burden to others! There is nothing cruel in that. It's a happy way for the one who goes, dear, to go suddenly. It is the way of all others I would choose for myself."
"But think of the ones left behind!" said Mary, with a shudder. "I don't see how that poor woman can go on living after having the one she loved best in all the world, torn so suddenly and so utterly out of her life."
"But he isn't, dear!" persisted Mrs. Ware gently. "You do not think because Joyce has gone away to another land, which we have never seen, and an ocean rolls between us, that she is torn out of our lives, do you? She does not know what we are doing, and we cannot follow her through her busy, happy days over there, but we know that she is still ours, that her love flows out to us just the same, that separation cannot make her any less our own, and that she looks forward with us to the happy time when we shall once more be together. That's all that death is, Mary. Just a going away into another country, as Joyce has gone. Only the separation is harder to bear because there can be no letters to bridge the silence. I used to have the same horror of it that you do, but after your father went away I learned to look upon it as God intended we should. Not a horrible doom which must overtake every one of us, but as a beautiful mystery through which we pass as through an open gate, with glad surprise at the things that shall be made plain to us, and with a great sense of triumph."
As she spoke, the light of the sunset seemed to turn the mountain trail up which she was gazing, into a golden path which led straight up to the City of the Shining Ones, and its radiant glow was reflected in her face. Mary's eyes followed hers. Somehow she felt warmed and comforted by her mother's strong faith, but she said nothing. Only sat and watched with her, the gorgeous colors of the sunset that were transfiguring the gray old mountain.