Page:Fletcher--Where Highways Cross.djvu/86

 "Then why doesn't He?" she asked with sudden fierceness. "Why, why? Why do wicked people flourish and go free, and become prosperous, and those who are innocent suffer for their wickedness? Why, sir?"

Hepworth shook his head. He was neither prepared nor able to answer such a question.

"That's why I couldn't believe those things," said Elisabeth. "I heard them preached and talked about, but it wasn't so in real life."

"We don't know all that God knows," said Hepworth. "It may be that what we call evil is working for good."

Elisabeth made an involuntary gesture of impatient dissent.

"I'm not clever enough to see that, sir," she said. "But if you'd known what I've known, you'd know how I feel about it. Supposing you saw an innocent man suffer for a guilty one, and knew what pain and anguish he must suffer, and had to suffer yourself because of it, and prayed to God,