his feet had drawn to that long colder path which would have
carried him away from her. How nearly had his young life been left,
like the hand of hemp he last had handled--half broken out, not
yet ready for strong use and good service. At that moment one scene
rose before her memory: a day at Bethlehem nigh Jerusalem; a young
Hebrew girl issuing from her stricken house and hastening to meet
Him who was the Resurrection and the Life; then in her despair
uttering her one cry:--"Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother
had not died."

The mist of tears blinded Gabriella, whose love and faith were as
Martha's. She knelt down and laid her cheek against the coarse hemp
where it had been wrapped about his wrist.

"Lord," she said, "hadst Thou not been here, hadst Thou not heard
my prayer for him, he would have died!"




XXIII


Spring, who breaks all promises in the beginning to keep them in
the end, had ceased from chilling caprice and withdrawals: the
whole land was now the frank revelation of her loveliness. Autumn--
the hours of falling and of departing; spring--season of rise and
of return. The rise of sap from root to summit; the rise of plant
from soil to sun; the rise of bud from bark to bloom; the rise of
song from heart to hearing: vital days. And days when things that