arranged that Roberta should pass the night in Margaret G----'s
apartment so that Penelope might have the large bedroom.

It was now after two o'clock and I suggested that we all needed sleep,
my thought being for Penelope; but she was aggressively awake, and
Roberta, as if bent on further excitement, started a new subject that
came like a challenge to me. She began innocently enough by putting her
arm around Penelope, as she sat on the bedside between the draped
curtains--I never saw her so beautiful--and saying sweetly: "You don't
know how terribly I'm going to miss you, Pen, when you get married."

Married! That word, so full of exquisite sentiment, seemed to stir only
what was evil in Penelope. Her face hardened, her eyes narrowed
cynically.

"Good old Bobby! I'm not so sure that I shall marry at all. I'm a
little fed up with this holy matrimony stuff. Perhaps I want my freedom
just as much as you do."

For a moment I caught her steady defiant gaze, then her eyes dropped and
shifted. I knew that Penelope was gone.

After this outburst the _other one_ was restrained enough for a time and
did not betray herself by violent utterances. Apparently she was
listening attentively to Roberta Vallis' views about life and love and
the destiny of woman, these views being as extreme and selfish as the
most wayward nature could demand.

I realized that the moment was critical and concentrated all my
spiritual power in an appeal to Penelope, praying that God would bring
her back and make her heed my words. I spoke gently of God's love for
His children and said that we need fear no evil within us or about us,
no dangers of any sort, if we will learn to draw to us and through us
that healing and protecting love. We can do this, we must do this by
establishing a love-current from God to us and from us to God, by
keeping it flowing just as an electrician keeps an electrical current
flowing--every day, every hour. It is not enough to pray for God's love,
we must keep our spiritual connections right, exactly as an electrician
keeps his electrical connections right, if we expect the current to
flow. We cannot make our electric lamps burn by merely wishing them to
burn, although there is a boundless ocean of electricity waiting to be
drawn upon. We must know how to tap that ocean. Similarly, the power of
God's infinite love will not descend upon us simply because we need it
or ask for it. We must ask for it in the right way. We mus