"The best way of all."

Pater Bonifacius had placed his kindly hand on the girl's hunched-up
shoulders, and there was something in his touch which seemed to soothe
the wild paroxysm of her grief. She raised her tear-stained face to his,
and without a word--for her lips were shaking and she could not have
spoken then--she handed him Andor's letter.

"May I go in," he asked, "and light the candle? It is too dark now to
read."

She rose quickly, and with an instinctive sense of respect for the
parish priest she made hasty efforts to smooth her hair and to wipe her
face with her apron. Then she turned into the room, and though her hand
still trembled slightly, she contrived to light the candle.

The old priest adjusted his horn-rimmed spectacles on his nose and drew
a chair close to the light.

He sat down and read Andor's letter through very slowly. When he had
finished, he handed it back to Elsa.

"God's ways, my child, are mysterious," he said, with a short sigh; "it
is not for us to question them."

"Mysterious?" exclaimed the girl, with passionate wrath; "I call them
cruel and unjust, pater! What have I done, that He should have done this
to me? Andor loved me and I loved him, he wrote me a letter full of
love, begging for a word from me to assure him that I would always love
him and that I would wait for him. Why was that letter kept from me? Why
was I not allowed to reply to it? My father would not have kept the
letter from me, had he not been stricken down with paralysis on the very
day when it came. It is God who kept my happiness away from me. It is
God who has spoilt my life and condemned me to regrets and wretchedness,
when I had done nothing to deserve such a cruel fate!"

"It is God," interposed the priest gently, "who even at this moment
forgives an erring child all the blasphemy which she utters."

Then, as Elsa, dry-eyed and with quivering lips, still looked the
personification of revolt, he placed his warm, gentle hands upon hers
and drew her a little closer to him.

"Are we, then," he asked softly, "such very important things in the
scheme of God's entire creation that everything must be ordered so as to
suit us best?"

"I only wanted to be happy," murmured Elsa, in a quivering voice.

"You only wanted to be happy in your own way, my child," rejoined the
priest, as he patted her hands tenderly, "but it does not happen to have
been God's way. Now who shall say which is the best way of bein