Ah! I know what you would say.
I lived so long I forgot them all, and why should they remember me?"
Here she was touched on the arm, and looking round, saw close to her the
face of one whom, it was very true, she had forgotten. She remembered him
but dimly after she had looked long at him. A little group had gathered
about her, with grieved looks, to see her distress. He who had touched
her was the spokesman of them all.
"There is nothing I would not do," he said, "for you and for love."
And then they all sighed, surrounding her, and added, "But it is
impossible--impossible!"
She stood and gazed at them, recognizing by degrees faces that she knew,
and seeing in all that look of grief and sympathy which makes all human
souls brothers. Impossible was not a word that had been often said to be
in her life; and to come out of a world in which everything could be
changed, everything communicated in the twinkling of an eye, and find a
dead blank before her and around her, through which not a word could go,
was more terrible than can be said in words. She looked piteously upon
them, with that anguish of helplessness which goes to every heart, and
cried, "What is impossible? To send a word--only a word--to set right
what is wrong? Oh, I understand," she said, lifting up her hands. "I
understand that to send messages of comfort must not be; that the people
who love you must bear it, as we all have done in our time, and trust
to God for consolation.
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