Excerpted Inspirations #71Linda Odhner, with photos by Liz KufsApr 4, 20230 min readUpdated: Feb 10, 2025
![[Continued from last week.] Surely the little thing was frightened sometimes, playing alone in a garden that Marguerite pictured as entirely surrounded by prowling beasts and marauding savages? Through many hours did she pray for the child that she might not be afraid, trying to send that little girl Marguerite Le Patourel to play with her in the lonely garden. She felt sometimes emptied of all joy, old and weary beyond words, as though the little girl in her who so scandalized her superiors had gone away. But she could not see her running down the garden paths with Véronique, or sitting on her bed when she was frightened in the night. She could only have faith that her emptiness and weariness were endured to some purpose for this child with whom she felt so curiously at one. She knew, though she had never been told, how greatly William loved Véronique, and she imagined sometimes that she felt the intensity of his love reaching out through the child to herself. Though he never wrote to her at all, she had never lost her sense of union with him, only now she felt it not directly but through the child. -Elizabeth Goudge, Green Dolphin Street (1944), p. 246](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/6feacf_267c6d158ee44e7da6e6a9de2bff1aa9~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_979,h_849,al_c,q_85,enc_avif,quality_auto/6feacf_267c6d158ee44e7da6e6a9de2bff1aa9~mv2.jpg)
Comments