s they had
come--two women, the man, and a child. The child was a baby of something
under two, a sad-looking little thing, with great, dark, pathetic eyes
looking out from under limp brown curls. She was very pale and fragile;
and when the woman who carried her set her down upon the floor and
propped her against the wall, she leaned against it listlessly, with her
little chin in her tiny hand, in a sorrowful, grown-up fashion. I longed
to take her and nestle her comfortably; but, of course, took no notice
of her. Any sign of pity or sympathy would have been misunderstood by
the women. All through the interminable talk upon which her fate
depended, that child sat wearily patient, making no demands upon anyone;
only the little head drooped, and the mouth grew pitiful in its complete
despondency.

The ways of the East are devious. The fact that the child had been
brought to us did not indicate a decision to give her to us instead of
to the Temple. The woman and the man who had persuaded them to come had
much to say to one another, and there was much we had to explain. A
child given to Temple service is not in all cases entirely cut off from
her people. If the Temple woman's hold on her is sure, her relations are
sometimes allowed to visit her; so far as friendly intercourse goes she
is not lost to them. But with us things are different. For the child's
own sake we have to refuse all intercourse whatever. Once given to us,
she is lost to them as if they had never had her. We adopt the little
one altogether or not at all.

It is a delicate thing to explain all this so clearly that there can be
no misunderstanding about it, without so infuriating the relations that
they will have nothing more to do with us. Naturally their view-point is
entirely different from ours, and they cannot appreciate our reasons.
At such a time we lean upon the Invisible, and count upon that
supernatural help which alone is sufficient for us; we count also upon
the prayers of those who know what it is to pray through all opposing
forces, till the battle is won by faith which is the victory.

It was strange to watch the women as the talk went on. The _woman_
within them had died, there was nothing of it left to which we could
appeal; everything about them was perverted, unnatural. I looked at the
insensitive faces and then at the sensitive face of the child, and
entered deeper than ever into the mercifulness of God's denunciations of
sin.

Once t