’And the reason that I’ve told you this, my dearest little daughter, is that you sound unhappy in your letters. You are haunted by a fear that _He_ may take things from you. But, darling, don’t you see that when you have Him you have everything. Oh, Meg, His strength! and the supreme perfection of His eyes. No brush can paint Him, no words describe Him. Oh, darling, won’t you be dutiful to Him and leave everything to His most unutterable love?’
But I can’t feel like daddy does about things. I can’t trust Him. I don’t even want to look at the One who asks if it means I have to give up anything. I love all my family so frightfully that I don’t know what I would do if He took any of them away. I only hope I would at least be civil to Him. I never could be ’dutiful’ about it. I have never really had a trouble, only that dreadful time when darling mother died, but then Michael came along so soon after that it seemed as if God had only taken away one love to give me back an even more perfect one. But since the war it seems to me that God is so relentless and so jealous. He won’t share hearts. He will have all or none, and I am growing to feel that it must be ’none’ with me. I am like that soul, pursued by the Hound of Heaven; I fear His ’following feet,’ I dread lest having Him I must have naught beside.
Twelve days again without a letter, and ah, dear God! the news from France! I kept my promise, and Ross knows, and though he wraps me round with love, it is as if I cannot taste or see or feel, but I can only listen for the post that does not come. It has been a wretched week, several of our friends are killed and many wounded, and to-day at lunch the S.P. brought a telegram, and my heart stopped beating.
’It’s Foxhill,’ Ross said huskily, looking across at me quickly, and my heart went on again, and then I prayed that I might be forgiven for being glad that it was Charlie and not Michael.
’Not killed,’ said Ross, ’but blinded, and his right arm gone above the elbow. He’s in London, and would like to see us. Shall we go this afternoon, there’s just time to catch the train?’
’Oh, poor Charlie—and poor Monica!’ I added and got up. I felt I hated God. Just then a car stopped, and the door bell rang, and presently the S.P. came and said,—