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“After a little while you won’t wish that. You have yet to learn how kind time is. And life has something for you—I feel it. Go forward to meet it fearlessly, dear. I know you don’t feel like that just now—but you will remember my words by and by.”

“I feel just now,” said Emily, who couldn’t bear to hide anything from Father, “that I don’t like God any more.”

Douglas Starr laughed—the laugh Emily liked best. It was such a dear laugh—she caught her breath over 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.