whose hallowing to pray, is to pray for the
holiness in ourselves that alone can make it tender.

"What do you know about God?" the voice asked defiantly, the face
still turned away.

"I know that his Living Spirit touches your thought and mine, this
moment, and moves them to each other. As you and I are alive, He is
alive beside us and between us. Your pain is his pain for you. You
feel it just where you are joined to Him; in the quick of your soul.
If it were not for that, you would be dead; you could not feel at
all."

Was this the Desire Ledwith of the old time, with deep thoughts but
half understood, and shrinking always from any recognizing word? She
shrunk now, just as much, from any needless expression of herself;
from any parade or talking over of sacred perception and experience;
but the real life was all the stronger in her; all the surer to use
her when its hour came. She had escaped out of all shams and
contradictions. Unconsent to the divine impulse comes of
incongruity. There was no incongruity now, to shame or to deter; no
separate or double consciousness to stand apart in her soul, rebuked
or repugnant. She gave herself quietly, simply, freely, to God's
thought for this other child of his; the Thought that she knew was
touching and stirring her own.

"I shall send somebody to you who can tell you more than I can,
Mary," she said, presently. "You will find there is heart and help
in the world that can only be God's own. Believe in that, and you
will come to believe in Him. You have seen only the wrong, bad side,
I am afraid. The _under_ side; the side turned down toward"--

"Hell-fire," said Mary Moxall, filling Desire's hesitation with an
utterance of hard, unrecking distinctness.

But Desire Ledwith knew that the hard unreckingness was only the
reflex of a tenderness quick, not dead, which the Lord would not let
go of to perish.

Sylvie and Hazel came in below, and she left Mary Moxall and went
down to them. The three took leave, for it was after five o'clock.

When they got out from the street-car at Borden Square, Desire left
them, to go round by Savin Street, and see Mr. Vireo. Hazel went
home; Mrs. Ripwinkley expected her to-night; Miss Craydocke and some
of the Beehive people were to come to tea. Sylvie hastened on to
Greenley Street, anxious to return to her mother. She had rarely
left her, lately, so long as this.

How would it be when they had heard from Mr. Thayne what she felt
su