Page:Further Chronicles of Avonlea (1920).djvu/214

182 “you were vexed with me one day, and you told me that God would punish me yet, because I made an idol of my son, and set it up in His place. Do you remember? Your word was a true one. God saw that I loved Chester too much, and He meant to take him from me. I thwarted one way when I made him give up Damaris. But one can’t fight against the Almighty. It was decreed that I must lose him — if not in one way, then in another. He has been taken from me utterly. I shall not even have his grave to tend, Cynthia.”

“As near to a mad woman as anything you ever saw, with her awful eyes,” Cynthia told Carl, afterwards. But she did not say so there. Although she was a shallow, commonplace soul, she had her share of womanly sympathy, and her own life had not been free from suffering. It taught her the right thing to do now. She sat down by the stricken creature and put her arms about her, while she gathered the cold hands in her own warm clasp. The tears filled her big blue eyes and her voice trembled as she said:

“Thyra, I’m sorry for you. I — I— lost a child once — my little first-born. And Chester was a dear, good lad.”

For a moment Thyra strained her small, tense body away from Cynthia’s embrace. Then she shuddered and cried out. The tears came, and she wept her agony out on the other woman's breast.