this country I don't find the question of social equality
interfering much with the work in their churches."

"That is because they are not trying to make this world any better, but
only to prepare for another," said Mrs. Fletcher.

"Now, we think that the nearer we approach the kingdom-of-heaven idea on
earth, the better off we shall be hereafter. Is that a modern idea?"

"It is an idea that is giving us a great deal of trouble. We've got into
such a sophisticated state that it seems easier to take care of the
future than of the present."

"And it isn't a very bad doctrine that if you take care of the present,
the future will take care of itself," rejoined Mrs. Fletcher.

"Yes, I know," insisted Mr. Morgan; "it's the modern notion of
accumulation and compensation--take care of the pennies and the pounds
will take care of themselves--the gospel of Benjamin Franklin."

"Ah," I said, looking up at the entrance of a newcomer, "you are just in
time, Margaret, to give the coup de grace, for it is evident by Mr.
Morgan's reference, in his Bunker Hill position, to Franklin, that he is
getting out of powder."

The girl stood a moment, her slight figure framed in the doorway, while
the company rose to greet her, with a half-hesitating, half-inquiring
look in her bright face which I had seen in it a thousand times.

II

I remember that it came upon me with a sort of surprise at the moment
that we had never thought or spoken much of Margaret Debree as beautiful.
We were so accustomed to her; we had known her so long, we had known her
always. We had never analyzed our admiration of her. She had so many
qualities that are better than beauty that we had not credited her with
the more obvious attraction. And perhaps she had just become visibly
beautiful. It may be that there is an instant in a girl's life
corresponding to what the Puritans called conversion in the soul, when
the physical qualities, long maturing, suddenly glow in an effect which
we call beauty. It cannot be that women do not have a consciousness of
it, perhaps of the instant of its advent. I remember when I was a child
that I used to think that a stick of peppermint candy must burn with a
consciousness of its own deliciousness.

Margaret was just turned twenty. As she paused there in the doorway her
physical perfection flashed upon me for the first time. Of course I do
not mean perfection, for perfection has no promise in it, rather the sad
note of li