said. "I loved dear Daisy. You know that I did. I love all the children."
Reverend Martin held his sobbing wife against his side and said, "Yes, of course you do. We all know that about you." He tried to smile, but his eyes were clouded with tears as well.
Grace looked more closely now at the stony faces around her. She suddenly recognized what she had not noticed in the year since Wesley's kidnapping. Her fellow missionaries were no longer the largehearted and determined people they had been when they had first arrived in Fenchow-fu. Grief lined their brows, and constant worry made their lips pinched and stern. She could sense the heartache that filled their breasts. They had seen too much, experienced too much, and it had left them in a state of constant grief.
There was Mrs. Jenkins whose oldest daughter, Miranda, had died suddenly earlier that spring. The lady's body appeared hollow now, her once proud chest caved in and her shoulders curved as if she were a coolie bearing a heavy load across her back. And Reverend Powers, once a robust and striking gentleman, had lost so much weight that his clothing hung on him like a scarecrow. And yet it was his eyes that bothered Grace even more: they had grown dull, the sparkle of light that had once shone in them with curiosity and even delight all but extinguished.
These people, her good and noble American compatriots, ap peared to her not only worn down but lost. Grace recalled how their mission had once required that they stand tall and sure. They were to be models to the godless here. They were to rise to their better selves and overcome any personal faults in an effort to bring unadulterated good to a poor, deprived race. Now their fervent purpose had grown as faint and forgotten as the soil that blew away on the wind across the plains outside the compound.
Grace looked back at Mildred, whose tears rolled down her husband's dark lapel. Reverend Martin held his wife tightly. Grace tried to ignore the frantic pumping of her heart that caused her vision to blur. She kept her eyes focused on the spot where Mildred's cheek met her husband's chest. The question that buzzed in Grace's mind was as loud as the sound of her feeble, determined blood doing its work. Where was her husband? Grace wondered with surprising ferocity.
She made herself look away and out the window of the Martins' parlor to the view of the dirt yard at the rear of the compound. In the tradition of Chinese walls, a large and handsome moon gate had been strategically placed so that the Martins might look beyond their property and onto the windswept plains. Out there, the dead grasses of the previous season swayed and yellow dust stirred. Grace could sense the spring sun starting to warm the land. A mild though persistent heat had begun to burn the dry, useless weeds. Her husband was out there in that rising fire.
He continued on and on in his endless search, though Grace feared he had forgotten what exactly it was that he looked for. Of course each day he hoped to stumble upon evidence of their son. And yet she had come to realize that the Reverend was now upon a quest for something else as well. He had not found it, and yet he continued, not nearly as defeated as the lesser ministers here with her now. No, her Reverend carried on in spite of it all. He was an extraordinary man. She wished he would be satisfied with only her company and love, but he wouldn't be the man he was if he would. He was out in that wilderness looking for something. Something large and significant. Grace feared he was on a mission to discover nothing less than the Lord Himself.
She shook her head ever so slightly and let out a little puff of air. It was dawning on her that by conducting his fruitless odyssey, the Reverend had been steadily losing not only his faith but his dear extended family here in the compound as well. These people, his people, had had no choice but to turn their backs on him. Her husband had lost not only the Lord but these decent souls. He, of all people, was utterly alone.
She understood with sudden and striking clarity that she was the last one on earth still able to reach him. Wherever he had gotten himself