CHAPTER XXXVII.

THE QUESTION OF DUTY.

It is a hard condition, of our existence here, that every exaltation
must have its depression. God will not let us have heaven here below,
but only such glimpses and faint showings as parents sometimes give to
children, when they show them beforehand the jewelry and pictures and
stores of rare and curious treasures which they hold for the possession
of their riper years. So it very often happens that the man who has
gone to bed an angel, feeling as if all sin were forever vanquished,
and he himself immutably grounded in love, may wake the next morning
with a sick-headache, and, if he be not careful, may scold about his
breakfast like a miserable sinner.

We will not say that our dear little Mary rose in this condition next
morning,--for, although she had the headache, she had one of those
natures in which, somehow or other, the combative element seems to be
left out, so that no one ever knew her to speak a fretful word. But
still, as we have observed, she had the headache and the
depression,--and there came the slow, creeping sense of waking up,
through all her heart and soul, of a thousand, thousand things that
could be said only to one person, and that person one that it would be
temptation and danger to say them to.

She came out of her room to her morning work with a face resolved and
calm, but expressive of languor, with slight signs of some inward
struggle.