"Mother!" he cried. In an instant, his arms were around her and she was
sobbing on his shoulder. "Mother," he pleaded, "forgive me! To think I
never knew!"
They had a long talk then, intimate and searching. "You have borne it
bravely," he said. "No one has ever dreamed of it, I am sure. The Master
told me, the other day, that I must not be afraid of life. He said that
everything, even our blessings, came to us through pain."
"I would not say everything," temporised Margaret, "but it is true that
much comes that way. We know happiness only by contrast."
"Happiness and misery, light and dark, sunshine and storm, life and
death," mused Lynn. "Yes, it is by contrast, but, as the Master says,
'the balance swings true.' I wish you knew him, mother; he has helped
me. I never knew my father, so it is not wrong for me to say that I wish
he might have been my father."
Margaret grew as cold as ice, and her senses reeled, then flame swept
her from head to foot. "Come," she said, not knowing her own voice, "it
is late."
Long afterward, in the solitude of her room, she took the precious
thought from its hiding-place, and found it purest gold. It was as
though all the bitterness in her heart, growing upward, through the
years, had flowered overnight into a perfect rose.