your stay were to me. You know without my telling.
You perhaps will blame yourself that you did not
see how near the end it was and stay beside me;
but John, beloved, I would not have been happy to
have had it so. It would have brought before you
with intensity the parting side of death, and this
I wished to avoid. I want you to think of me as
gone to be with Jesus and with your dear father.
Besides, I wanted the pleasure of giving you back
again to your work before I went away.

"It was because I knew the end was near that I
dared do a lot of things that I would have been
careful about otherwise. It was in the strength of
the happiness of your presence that I forced
myself to walk again that you might remember your
mother once more on her feet. Remember now when
you are reading this I shall be walking the golden
streets with as strong and free a gait as you walk
your desert, dear. So don't regret anything of the
good time we had, nor wish you had stayed longer.
It was perfect, and the good times are not over
for us. We shall have them again on the other side
some day when there are no more partings forever.

"But there is just one thing that has troubled me
ever since you first went away, and that is that
you are alone. God knew it was not good for man to
be alone, and He has a helpmeet for my boy
somewhere in the world, I am sure. I would be glad
if I might go knowing that you had found her and
that she loved you as I loved your father when I
married him. I have never talked much about these
things to you because I do not think mothers
should try to influence their children to marry
until God sends the right one, and then it is not
the mother who should be the judge, of course. But
once I spoke to you in a letter. You remember? It
was after I had met a sweet girl whose life seemed
so fitted to belong to yours. You opened your
heart to me then and told me you had found the one
you loved and would never love another--but she
was not for you. My heart ached for you, laddie,
and I prayed much for you t