was, of course, incidental to her position; but she knew well
enough that there were thousands who still had their husbands, who were
no better off than she was. In addition to this, she had succumbed to
the influence of that absurd belief, so prevalent in cultivated circles,
that typical modern thought is superior to Christianity.

She felt the ease and peace of mind that resulted from having a belief
of some sort; but she would have regarded it as a surrender of principle
to return to Christianity; and, far from suspecting that most modern
thought, as manifested in the doctrine of the "Inner Light," for
instance, or Theosophy, or Christian Science, is inferior to
Christianity, she had become a member of the Inner Light, and paid its
heavy entrance fee of fifty guineas, with a feeling of deep pride and
satisfaction.

The doctrine of the Inner Light was an importation from America. It had
been introduced into England by a very intelligent, very tall, but very
delicate looking Virginian lady, about fifteen years before this story
opens. It had not spread very much, it is true,--its total number of
members in Great Britain amounted only to two thousand five hundred; but
it was all the more select on that account, and it was guaranteed by its
founders and by all who belonged to it, to be entirely free from those
"regrettable remnants of superstition which so very much marred the
beauty of the older religions."

It professed to recognise only one purifying and creative agent in life,
and that was Light. "The world was all darkness and death," said the
first prophet of the "Inner Light,"--an American named Adolf
Albernspiel, who had died worth half a million dollars,--"and then Light
appeared, and with it Life and the great lucid Powers: Thought, Spirit,
Order."

It was so obviously superior to Christianity, it commended itself so
cogently to the meanest intelligence, that the members of the "Inner
Light," try how they might to exercise the tolerance which is universal
to-day, could hardly refrain from a mild consciousness of superiority
when they looked down upon other creeds.

Thus the priests of the Order were not called "Fathers" or "Brethren,"
which implied a false anthropomorphic relationship to a supreme parent
"God"; they were simply "Incandescents":--Incandescent Bernard,
Incandescent Margaret, Incandescent Mansel, and so on. Again, in
allowing women to officiate at the altar of the Supreme Incandescence,
the