d, "Faith as a little child. That is literally hers.
And I was shocked by it--and tried to destroy it, until I suddenly saw
what I was doing. I was--in my cloddish egotism--trying to show her
that she was irreverent BECAUSE she could believe what in my soul I do
not, though I dare not admit so much even to myself. She took from some
strange passing visitor to her tortured bedside what was to her a
revelation. She heard it first as a child hears a story of magic. When
she came out of the hospital, she told it as if it was one. I--I--" he
bit his lips and moistened them, "argued with her and reproached her.
Christ the Merciful, forgive me! She sat in her squalid little room
with her magic--sometimes in the dark--sometimes without fire, and she
clung to it, and loved it and asked it to help her, as a child asks its
father for bread. When she was answered--and God forgive me again for
doubting that the simple good that came to her WAS an answer--when any
small help came to her, she was a radiant thing, and without a shadow of
doubt in her eyes told me of it as proof--proof that she had been heard.
When things went wrong for a day and the fire was out again and the room
dark, she said, 'I 'aven't kept near enough--I 'aven't trusted TRUE. It
will be gave me soon,' and when once at such a time I said to her, 'We
must learn to say, Thy will be done,' she smiled up at me like a happy
baby and answered:

"'Thy will be done on earth AS IT IS IN 'EAVEN. Lor', there's no cold
there, nor no 'unger nor no cryin' nor pain. That's the way the will is
done in 'eaven. That's wot I arst for all day long--for it to be done
on earth as it is in 'eaven.' What could I say? Could I tell her that
the will of the Deity on the earth he created was only the will to do
evil--to give pain--to crush the creature made in His own image. What
else do we mean when we say under all horror and agony that befalls, 'It
is God's will--God's will be done.' Base unbeliever though I am, I could
not speak the words. Oh, she has something we have not. Her poor,
little misspent life has changed itself into a shining thing, though it
shines and glows only in this hideous place. She herself does not know
of its shining. But Drunken Bet would stagger up to her room and ask to
be told what she called her 'pantermine' stories. I have seen her there
sitting listening--listening with strange quiet on her and dull yearning
in her sodden eyes. So would othe