So there was no error, the Bible was true, more or less; Faith was not
built on running water or on sand. Life was not a mere hellish mockery,
where tiaras turned to crowns of thorn and joy was but an inch rule by
which to measure the alps of human pain. Life was a door, a gateway.
The door dreadful, the gate perilous, if you will, but beyond it lay no
dream, no empty blackness. Beyond it stretched the Promised Land peopled
with the lost who soon would be the found.
Barbara's last illness was rapid. When she began to go she went swiftly.
"Can't you save her?" asked her son of one of the doctors.
"The disease has gone too far," he answered. "Moreover, it is impossible
to save one who seeks to die."
"Why does she seek to die?" blurted Anthony, glaring at him.
"Perhaps, young gentleman, you are in a better position to answer that
question than I am," replied the doctor, who knew of Anthony's cruel
conduct to his mother and had reproached him with it, not once but on
several occasions.
"You mean that I have killed her," said Anthony savagely.
"No," replied the doctor, "she is dying of tuberculosis of the lungs.
What were the primary causes which induced that disease I cannot be
sure.
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