drooped in her chair,
her hands listless in her lap.

Aunt Bell looked sympathetically voluble but wisely refrained from
speech.

"I wonder," continued the girl, "if you knew at the time, the time when
my eyes seemed to open--when I was deceived by his pretension into
thinking--you remember that first sermon, Aunt Bell--how independent and
noble I thought it was going to be. Oh, Aunt Bell--what a slump in my
faith that day! I think its foundations all went, and then naturally the
rest of it just seemed to topple. Did you realise it all the time?"

So it was religious doubt--a loss of faith--heterodoxy? Having listened
until she gathered this much, Aunt Bell broke in--"My dear, you must let
me guide you in this. You know what I've been through. Study the higher
criticism, reverently, if you will--even broaden into the higher
unbelief. Times have changed since my youth; one may broaden into almost
anything now and still be orthodox, especially in our church. But beware
of the literal mind, the material view of things. Remember that the
essentials of Christianity are spiritually historic even if they aren't
materially historic--facts in the human consciousness if not in the
world of matter. You need not pretend to understand how God can be one
in essence and three in person--I grant you that is only a reversion to
polytheism and is so regarded by the best Biblical scholars--but never
surrender your belief in the atoning blood of the Son whom He sent a
ransom for many--at least as a spiritual fact. I myself have dismissed
the Trinity as one of those mysteries to be adoringly believed on earth
and comprehended only in heaven--but that God so loved the world that he
gave his only begotten Son--Child, do you think I could look forward
without fear to facing God, if I did not believe that the blood of his
only begotten Son had washed from my soul that guilt of the sin I
committed in Adam? Cling to these simple essentials, and otherwise
broaden even into the higher unbelief, if you like--"

"But, Aunt Bell, it _isn't_ that! I never trouble about those
things--though you have divined truly that I have doubted them
lately--but the doubts don't distress me. Actually, Aunt Bell, for a
woman to lose faith in her God seems a small matter beside losing faith
in her husband. You can doubt and reason and speculate and argue about
the first--it's fashionable--people rather respect unbelievers
nowadays--but Oh, Aunt Bell, how the other