But now, down here, face to face with reality, how different, how almost impossibly different it seemed! Here was her aunt, absolutely shut up within her own miserable self. She could think of nothing else, be interested in nothing else, for all her thoughts were chained to the one wretched center. She was as outside the Realm of Love as though she lived in a world of “outer darkness” where love simply did not exist.

How, oh, how, thought Grace and Glory desperately, could one get into her dungeon, and how could one strike off the chains which the prisoner seemed actually to cherish and to be unwilling to be rescued from? How could one even speak to her of the only Deliverer, when she believed that he was the cause of all her unhappiness? Yes, indeed, it was one thing up there in the glory and light of the Kingdom of Love to feel a passionate longing to help and save. But when one got right down into the midst of the actual reality, how was it to be done? How could one reach hearts immured in impregnable prisons, and how awaken even the beginning of a desire for deliverance?

Grace and Glory remembered the whole conversation up there on the High Places, and how they had all agreed that this was the very likeliest time of all for them to be able to help Mrs. Dismal Forebodings and her family because the calamities which had overtaken them would surely make them begin to feel their need of the Shepherd’s help. But now it was all so different. She remembered the voice of the King saying, “I need someone to speak for me, for they will not come to me themselves.” And her glad, exultant cry that she would be his mouthpiece. She remembered the tone in which he had said, “Do you think they will listen to you, Grace and Glory?” What had she answered? “You shall tell me what to say and I will say it for you.”

“Yes,” thought Grace and Glory suddenly, “that is the answer. He must tell me what to say. He must teach me. I can do nothing now; but I will go to him and will tell him all about it, and I will ask him to teach me what approach I am to make and how to win right through into my aunt’s prison house.”

However, she made one last attempt to break down the antagonism against herself. “Dearest Aunt,” she said, “I do hope you will sometimes let me come to see you to do what I can to help. And perhaps next time you will let me tell you how I was delivered from all my fears and sorrows.”

“Thank you, Much-Afraid,” said her aunt icily, “but I am not interested. I know already just what you will say and it is the last thing that I am interested to hear.”

Grace and Glory, feeling exactly as though she were holding a tiny pebble in her hand with which to try to batter down an impregnable stronghold, rose to her feet and prepared to take her departure. She put her arms around her aunt and kissed the coldly unresponsive cheek, saying softly: “Only let me love you, Aunt Dismal. Let me try to atone in some way for all my lovelessness in the past. Do let me come to see you and my cousin Gloomy and help in any way that I can.”