You are very, very kind, and I thank
you----"
She broke off, as if she had been going to say something more but had
wearily forgotten what it was.
"Oh, do not say that!" His voice was like one pleading to be spared a
blow. "I love you. There is no greater joy to me on earth than to serve
you."
"Hush," she said; "don't say that. I am very sorry for you, but sorrow
must come to us all in some way."
"Don't, don't!" he cried--"don't tell me that suffering is good. It is
not good; it is an evil. It is right to shun evil; it is the only
right. The other is a horrid fable--a lie concocted by priests and
devils!"
"Suppose you loved someone--me, for instance--and I was dead, and you
knew quite certainly that by dying you would come to where I was--would
you call death good or evil?"
He demurred. He did not want to admit belief in anything connected with
the doctrine of submission.
"I said 'suppose,'" she said.
"I would go through far more than death to come near you."
"Suffering is just a gate, like death. We go through it to get the
things we really want most."
"I don't believe in a religion that calls suffering better than
happiness; but I know you do."
"No, I don't," she said, "and God does not; and people who talk as if He
did not want us to seek happiness--even our own happiness--are making to
themselves a graven image.
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