"
"Do you think I have not grieved over it?"
"I know you have, but it was waste of time. It's no good--no good.
Please don't cheer me, and tell me I shall write better books yet, and
that this trial is for my good. Dear Bishop, don't try and comfort me. I
can't bear it."
"My poor child, I firmly believe you will write better books than the
one which is lost, and I firmly believe that you will one day look back
upon this time as a stop in your spiritual life, but I had not intended
to say so. The thought was in my mind, but it was you who put the words
into my mouth."
"I was so afraid that--"
"That I was going to improve the occasion?"
"Yes. Dr. Brown and the nurse are so dreadfully cheerful now, and always
talking about the future, and how celebrated I shall be some day. If you
and Rachel follow suit I shall--I think I shall--go out of my mind."
The Bishop did not answer.
"Dr. Brown may be right," Hester went on. "I may live to seventy, and I
may become--what does he call it?--a distinguished author. I don't know
and I don't care. But whatever happens in the future, nothing will bring
back the book which was burned."
The Bishop did not speak. He dared not.
"If I had a child," Hester continued, in the exhausted voice with which
he was becoming familiar, "and it died, I might have ten more, beautiful
and clever and affectionate, but they would not replace the one I had
lost.
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