“And the second is still harder,” said he gently. “Hard, but not impossible. If you will bear forgivingly all the antagonism of your husband and mother-in-law, bear it and use it as a means out of which to achieve victory over your own self, bearing all without allowing yourself to feel either resentment or self-pity, do you know what will happen then, Umbrage?”

“What?” she asked.

“You will find yourself up on the High Places with the flower of love blooming in your heart, able to love, and to rejoice in loving, those two whom you now hate, and, best of all, with power to help them too. For sooner or later, love changes everything.

“Yes, you will find that you have reached the High Places without ever having left your home. For love comes into the heart, not by trying to force it, but by accepting people as they are, and bearing all that they do against you, which is forgiveness. Are you willing for this?”

Umbrage looked up at him through her tears and whispered again: “Yes, Lord. Please make it possible in my experience.” Just then her little daughter, who had been playing on the lawn with her ball, ran up to the seat where her mother and the Shepherd were sitting and held up her little arms for her mother to take her upon her lap. Umbrage seized her passionately, and pressing the innocent little baby face against her own, said with a sob, “Titty-Tatty, your mother is going to begin a new life.”

“You know,” said the Shepherd quietly, but with a little smile playing around his lips, “You know I really don’t like that name for a little child. Wouldn’t you like to call her (just between yourselves of course) by another name, Umbrage?”

“Yes,” said Umbrage, flushing deeply. “What name, my Lord?”

“Why not call her ‘Acceptance-with-Joy’? Even her father would not mind your calling her Joy as a pet name. And to you she would be a little flower of Acceptance-with-Joy growing in your home.”

“Yes,” said Umbrage softly, “that is a lovely name, and when I call her that I shall always remember what you have told me.”

The Shepherd, with one of his lovely smiles, then said: “I don’t really like your own name either. It is not a good name for a disciple of mine to bear. Would you not like to change that also?”

The woman who had lost the man she had loved because she had been in character so like her own name, looked at the Shepherd with tears in her eyes and nodded speechlessly. “Then,” said he very gently, “we will call you ‘Bearing-with-Love,’ or ‘Forgiveness.’” Then he took out one of the thorn-shaped seeds of love, and with gentle but firm hand, planted it in her heart and went his way.