ion, the circumstances on which she looked were the more
revolting.

Ever since Smith left she had been more or less under the impression
that an unseen person there in that very room had contended with him.
Again and again she had swept it aside as an infectious madness that she
was catching from the fanatics about her, but it had recurred; and now
as, not caring to light her lamps, she sat alone in the darkness by the
very table against which Smith had writhed and wailed, she felt pressed
upon by a spiritual life external to her own.

Within her soul from some unknown depth the word arose distinctly as if
spoken, "Pray. You cannot save yourself. Pray."

"I am going mad." Susannah whispered the words audibly. It was a
comfort to her even to hear her own voice. But when her whisper was past
she again listened involuntarily.

The words within her rose again. "Even so. Pray. If you are going mad,
you have the more need."

Susannah had come to class all search for definite and material answer
to prayer as one of the superstitions of false religion. In this
category stood also the hearing of voices and obedience to monitions
from the unseen. Now she reproached herself because she could not
immediately silence this fancy of disturbed nerves.

Long sad thoughts of all her reasons against prayer, strongest among
them the futility of her husband's prayers, passed through her mind with
their train of haunting memories, but in the cessation from argument
which these pictures of the past produced, the words arose again dearly
within her soul, like airdrops rising from the depths of a well and
expanding into momentary iridescence on the surface, "Pray for help. If
you have no faith in God's arm, you have the more need to seek it."

Stung by the fear that she was losing her mind, she rose as she would
have faced a human antagonist.

"God's arm!" she said aloud, "my husband prayed such prayers, but I will
ask nothing till I see his request fulfilled."

She spoke the quick words with an almost reckless sense of experiment.
Her thought was that before she could honestly think of such prayer she
must see some fruit of Angel's petitions for this man Smith and for her
own safety.

"Save Smith from further degradation," she said, her breath coming
sharply. "Save me now, if that sort of prayer is right. Do this in
answer to my husband's prayers. Remember his prayers."

She had begun recklessly, supposing that she was contending