"What did he do?" said Sara, who was a little absent.
"Oh, all kinds of things. He committed suicide in the end. And now--she is going to marry a friend of mine."
"I never told you about him before," said Pensée, "but I am so miserable to-day that you may as well know. He was a sort of brother, yet much more. One didn't meet him often in our set, because he didn't and doesn't care about it. Life, however, threw us together."
"How am I to give him up?" she asked. "How shall I bear it? I get so unhappy. I asked my little boy the other day what he did when I went away from home. He said--'I gather chestnuts and feel lonely.' And I asked my little girl what she did, and she said--'I cry till you come back again.' There's the difference between men and women. I am like my poor Lilian. You, Sara, if you could be wretched, would be more like the boy."
"That wonderful passage in the New Testament--I often remember it! After all the agony and separation were over, Simon Peter said to the disciples, _I go a fishing_. He went back to the work he was doing when our Lord first called him. What courage!"
"Of course, my heart has been taking an undue complacency in the creature, and this seldom fails to injure. I have a wish to be free from distress, and enjoy life. As if we were born to be happy! No, this world is a school to discipline souls and fit them for the other. I must forget my friend."
"It will be very hard. I took such an interest in his career. If I didn't mention him to you, or to other people, I mentioned him often to God. And now--it is somewhat awkward."
"You little goose," said Sara, "you have a heart of crystal. Nothing could be awkward for you."
"My heart," said Pensée, with a touch of resentment, "is just as dangerous and wicked as any other heart! You misunderstand me wilfully. I like prayer at all times, because it is a help and because it lifts one out of the world. Oh, when shall every thought be brought into captivity?"
"Listen!" said Sara, "listen! If there is an attractiveness in human beings so lovely that it could call your Almighty God Himself from heaven to dwell among them and to die most cruelly for their sakes, is it to be expected that they will not--and who will dare say that they should not?--as mortals themselves, discover qualities in each other which draw out the deepest affection? I have no patience with your religion--none."