Glory McWhirk had been up and watching the great fire, since Roger Armstrong first went out.
She had seen it from the window of Miss Henderson's room, where she was to sleep to-night; and had first carefully lowered the blinds lest the light should waken her mistress, who, after suffering much pain, had at length, by the help of an anodyne, fallen asleep; and then she had come round softly to the southwest room, to call the minister.
The door stood open, and she saw him sitting in his chair, asleep. Just as she crossed the threshold to come toward him, he started, and spoke those words out of his restless dream:
"Faith! Faith! What danger is about you, child?"
They were instinct with his love. They were eager with his visionary fear. It only needed a human heart to interpret them.
Glory drew back as he sprang to his feet, and noiselessly disappeared. She would not have him know that she had heard this cry with which he waked.
"He dreamed about her! and he called her Faith. How beautiful it is to be cared for so!"
Glory--while we have so long been following Faith--had no less been living on her own, peculiar, inward life, that reached to, that apprehended, that seized ideally--that was denied, so much!
As Glory had seen, in the old years, children happier than herself, wearing beautiful garments, and "hair that was let to grow," she saw those about her now whom life infolded with a grace and loveliness she might not look for; about whom fair affections, "let to grow," clustered radiant, and enshrined them in their light.
She saw always something that was beyond; something she might not attain; yet, expectant of nothing, but blindly true to the highest within her, she lost no glimpse of the greater, through lowering herself to the less.
Her soul of womanhood asserted itself; longing, ignorantly, for a soul love. "To be cared for, so!"
But she would rather recognize it afar--rather have her joy in knowing the joy that might be--than shut herself from knowledge in the content of a common, sordid lot.
She did not think this deliberately, however; it was not reason, but instinct. She renounced unconsciously. She bore denial, and never knew she was denied.
Of course, the thought of daring to covet what she saw, had never crossed her, in her humbleness. It was quite away from her. It was something with which she had nothing to do. "But it must be beautiful to be like Miss Faith." And she thanked God, mutely, that she had this beautiful life near her, and could look on it every day.