He heard me and saw me, but he did not know me.

In a moment he was gone." "Would it not be so, mother, if we were to meet him in fact?
We are so changed." "It might be so; but--" The mother's head droops, and her face knits as with a wrench of pain; recovering, however, she goes on--"but we could make ourselves known to him." Tirzah tossed her arms, and moaned again.
"Water, mother, water, though but a drop." The mother stares around in blank helplessness.

She has named God so often, and so often promised in his name, the repetition is beginning to have a mocking effect upon herself.

A shadow passes before her dimming the dim light, and she is brought down to think of death as very near, waiting to come in as her faith goes out.
Hardly knowing what she does, speaking aimlessly, because speak she must, she says again, "Patience, Tirzah; they are coming--they are almost here." She thought she heard a sound over by the little trap in the partition-wall through which they held all their actual communication with the world.

And she was not mistaken.