Then he leaned on his elbow, watching its quivering antennae and strange movements, smiling.
"Even you," he whispered, "shall not die.

Even you He loves.

Even you He will fold in His arms when He takes everything and makes it perfect and happy." When the thing had gone he smoothed the leaves of his Bible somewhat caressingly.

The leaves of that book had dropped blood for him once; they had taken the brightness out of his childhood; from between them had sprung the visions that had clung about him and made night horrible.
Adder-like thoughts had lifted their heads, had shot out forked tongues at him, asking mockingly strange, trivial questions that he could not answer, miserable child: Why did the women in Mark see only one angel and the women in Luke two?
Could a story be told in opposite ways and both ways be true?
Could it?
could it?
Then again: Is there nothing always right, and nothing always wrong?
Could Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite "put her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workman's hammer ?" and could the Spirit of the Lord chant paeans over her, loud paeans, high paeans, set in the book of the Lord, and no voice cry out it was a mean and dastardly sin to lie, and kill the trusting in their sleep?
Could the friend of God marry his own sister, and be beloved, and the man who does it today goes to hell, to hell?
Was there nothing always right or always wrong?
Those leaves had dropped blood for him once: they had made his heart heavy and cold; they had robbed his childhood of its gladness; now his fingers moved over them caressingly.
"My father God knows, my father knows," he said; "we cannot understand; He knows." After a while he whispered, smiling--"I heard your voice this morning when my eyes were not yet open, I felt you near me, my Father.
Why do you love me so?
His face was illuminated.

In the last four months the old question has gone from me.