and
diseased children that your church is built right on top of!"

Not the words but the sob behind them moved him to ask gently: "Katie
dear, what is it? What's the trouble?"

Her eyes were swimming. "Uncle--it's the misery of the world! It's the
people who aren't where they belong! It's the lives ruined through
blunders--it's the cruelty--the needless _cruelty_ of it all." She leaned
forward, the tears upon her cheeks. "Uncle, how can you? You have a
mind--a kind heart. But what good are they? If you believe the things you
say you believe--oh you think you believe them--but you don't seem to
connect them. Here to-night we've been talking about the forms of the
church--finances of the church--and humanity is in _need_, uncle--bodily
need--and oh the _heart_ need! Why don't you go and see? Why you've only
to look! What are your puny little problems of the church compared with
people's lives? And yet you--cut off--detached--save in so far as feeding
on them goes--claim to be following in the footsteps of a man who
followed in _their_ footsteps--a man who went about seeing how people
lived--finding out what troubled them--trying--" She sank back with a
sob. "I didn't mean to--but I simply _can't understand it._ Can't
understand how you _can_."

She hid her face. _Those faces_--they passed and passed.

He had risen and was walking about the room. After a moment he stopped
and cleared his throat. "If I didn't think, Katherine, that something had
happened to almost derange you, I should not have permitted you to
continue these ravings."

She raised her head defiantly. "Truths people don't want to hear are
usually disposed of as ravings!"

"Now if I may be permitted a word. Your indictment is not at all new,
though your heat in making it would indicate you believed yourself to be
saying something never said before--"

"I know it's been said before! I'm more interested in knowing how it's
been answered."

"You have never seemed sufficiently interested in the affairs of the
church, Katherine, for one to think of seriously discussing our charities
with you--"

"Uncle, do you know what your charities make me think of?"

He had resumed his chair--and cigar. "No," he said coldly, "I do not
know what they make you 'think of.' I was attempting to tell you what
they were."

"I know what they are. The idea that comes to my mind has a rather
vulgar--"

"Oh, pray do not hesitate, Katherine. You have not been speaking wha