yet five
o'clock. Florence struck a light and saw by the little clock on the
mantelpiece that the hands pointed to a quarter to five.

"There is time," she thought, eagerly. She sat up on her elbow and
reflected. Her eyes were bright, her face paler than ever. Presently
she got out of bed and fell on her knees; she pressed her face against
the side of the bed, and it is doubtful whether many words came to her,
but when she rose at last she seemed to hear an inward voice, and the
voice was saying, "Refuse the Evil and choose the Good."

The voice kept on saying, "Refuse the Evil and choose the Good," and
Florence felt more and more frightened, and more and more intensely
anxious to do something in great haste before she had time for
reflection.

She lit the candles and put them on the writing-table at the foot of
the bed, and then she sat by the writing-table and pulled out a sheet
of paper and began to write. She wrote rapidly, with scarcely a pause.
Whenever she stopped the voice kept saying louder and clearer, louder
and clearer, "Refuse the Evil and choose the Good."

Florence went on writing. At last she had finished. She folded up the
sheet of paper and put it into an envelope. Then she hastily opened
the drawer which contained the silver wreath and the ruby locket and
the purse of gold and the parchment scroll. She collected them
hastily, scarcely glancing at them, wrapped up in tissue-paper, then in
brown, tied the little parcel with string, slipped the note inside the
string and laid it on the table.

The voice which kept speaking to her was now quieter; it ceased to say,
"Refuse the Evil," but once again through the silent room she seemed to
hear the echo of the words, calm, great, all knowing, "_Choose the
Good, choose the Good_," and then she hastily, very hastily got into
her clothes, for it seemed to her that there was nothing else worth
while in all the world but the following, the obeying of this voice.
To choose the Good was greater than to choose Happiness, greater than
to choose Ambition, greater than to choose Wealth. It was the only
thing.

So she dressed herself in her everyday clothes, and, taking the little
parcel, she softly unfastened the door, and then she slipped down
through the silent house and entered Sir John Wallis's study, and laid
the packet which contained all the symbols of her success and her
letter of confession on his desk. Having done this, she turned away,
came