Whatever slow, unending work
lay in them, whatever hungry loneliness they held for her heart, or
coarseness of deed, she saw it all, shrinking from nothing. She
looked at the tense blue-corded veins in her wrist, full of fine
pure blood,--gauged herself coolly, her lease of life, her power of
endurance,--measured it out against the work waiting for her. The work
would be long, she knew. She would be old before it was finished, quite
an old woman, hard, mechanical, worn out. But the day would be so
bright, when it came, it would atone for all: the day would be bright,
the home warm again; it would hold all that life had promised her of
good.
All? Oh, Margaret, Margaret! Was there no sullen doubt in the brave
resolve? Was there no shadow rose just then, dark, ironical, blotting
out father and mother and home, coming nearer, less alien to your soul
than these, than even your God?
If any such cold, masterful shadow rose out of years gone, and clutched
at the truest life of her heart, she stifled it, and thrust it down.
And yet, leaning on the gate, and thinking drearily, vacantly, she
remembered a time when God came nearer to her than He did now, and came
through that shadow,--when, by the help of that dead hope, He of whom
she read to-night came close, an infinitely tender Helper, who, with the
human love that was in her heart to-day, had loved his mother and John
and Mary.
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