feel bitterness, and to wish to cast the blame of your suffering on
another. You forget that I had reason to be deeply offended with you.
You also forget my continual suffering, which sometimes makes me seem
harsh and unkind against my will."

"Your words seem only sweet and gracious now," I returned. "They have
lifted a great weight from my heart, and I wish I could repay you for
them by taking some portion of your suffering on myself."

"It is right that you should have that feeling, but idle to express it,"
she answered gravely. "If such wishes could be fulfilled my sufferings
would have long ceased, since any one of my children would gladly lay
down his life to procure me ease."

To this speech, which sounded like another rebuke, I made no reply.

"Oh, this is bitterness indeed--a bitterness you cannot know," she
resumed after a while. "For you and for others there is always the
refuge of death from continued sufferings: the brief pang of
dissolution, bravely met, is nothing in comparison with a lingering
agony like mine, with its long days and longer nights, extending to
years, and that great blackness of the end ever before the mind. This
only a mother can know, since the horror of utter darkness, and vain
clinging to life, even when it has ceased to have any hope or joy in it,
is the penalty she must pay for her higher state."

I could not understand all her words, and only murmured in reply: "You
are young to speak of death."

"Yes, young; that is why it is so bitter to think of. In old age the