, more all-conquering; and day by day, fighting side by side
against it, John Ingerfield and Anne, his wife, draw closer to each
other. On the battle-field of life we learn the worth of strength. Anne
feels it good, when growing weary, to glance up and find him near her;
feels it good, amid the troubled babel round her, to hear the deep,
strong music of his voice.

And John, watching Anne's fair figure moving to and fro among the
stricken and the mourning; watching her fair, fluttering hands, busy with
their holy work, her deep, soul-haunting eyes, changeful with the light
and shade of tenderness; listening to her sweet, clear voice, laughing
with the joyous, comforting the comfortless, gently commanding, softly
pleading, finds creeping into his brain strange new thoughts concerning
women--concerning this one woman in particular.

One day, rummaging over an old chest, he comes across a coloured picture-
book of Bible stories. He turns the torn pages fondly, remembering the
Sunday afternoons of long ago. At one picture, wherein are represented
many angels, he pauses; for in one of the younger angels of the group--one
not quite so severe of feature as her sisters--he fancies he can trace
resemblance to Anne. He lingers long over it. Suddenly there rushes
through his brain the thought, How good to stoop and kiss the sweet feet
of such a woman! and, thinking it, he blushes like a boy.

So from the soil of human suffering spring the flowers of human love and
joy, and from the flowers there fall the seeds of infinite pity for human
pain, God shaping all things to His ends.

Thinking of Anne, John's face grows gentler, his hand kinder; dreaming of
him, her heart grows stronger, deeper, fuller. Every available room in
the warehouse has been turned into a ward, and the little hospital is
open free to all, for John and Anne feel that the whole world are their
people. The piled-up casks are gone--shipped to Woolwich and Gravesend,
bundled anywhere out of the way, as though oil and tallow and the gold
they can be stirred into were matters of small moment in this world, not
to be thought of beside such a thing as the helping of a human brother in
sore strait.

All the labour of the day seems light to them, looking forward to the
hour when they sit together in John's old shabby dining-room above the
counting-house. Yet a looker-on might imagine such times dull to them;
for they are strangely shy of one another, strangely