those who are led through the valley of the shadow. I left her with her son
and daughter, and returned to my own family. They too were of course in the
skirts of the cloud. Had they only heard of the occurrence, it would have
had little effect; but death had appeared to them. Everyone but Connie had
seen the dead lying there; and before the day was over, I wished that she
too had seen the dead. For I found from what she said at intervals, and
from the shudder that now and then passed through her, that her imagination
was at work, showing but the horrors that belong to death; for the
enfolding peace that accompanies it can be known but by sight of the dead.
When I spoke to her, she seemed, and I suppose for the time felt tolerably
quiet and comfortable; but I could see that the words she had heard fall in
the going and coming, and the communications of Charlie and Harry to each
other, had made as it were an excoriation on her fancy, to which her
consciousness was ever returning. And now I became more grateful than I
had yet been for the gift of that gipsy-child. For I felt no anxiety about
Connie so long as she was with her. The presence even of her mother could
not relieve her, for she and Wynnie were both clouded with the same
awe, and its reflex in Connie was distorted by her fancy. But the sweet
ignorance of the baby, which rightly considered is more than a type or
symbol of faith, operated most healingly; for she appeared in her sweet
merry ways--no baby was ever more filled with the mere gladness of life
than Connie's baby--to the mood in which they all were, like a little sunny
window in a cathedral crypt, telling of a whole universe of sunshine and
motion beyond those oppressed pillars and low-groined arches. And why
should not the baby know best? I believe the babies do know best. I
therefore favoured her having the child more than I might otherwise have
thought good for her, being anxious to get the dreary, unhealthy impression
healed as soon as possible, lest it should, in the delicate physical
condition in which she was, turn to a sore.