ent on after an instant's pause, "precisely what is to be
lamented--and prevented?"

Mrs. Sand looked at her visitor with dry suspicion. "I suppose you are a
friend of his," she said.

"I have known him for years. Pray don't misunderstand me. There is
nothing against him--nothing whatever."

"Oh, I don't suppose there is, except that he is not on the Lord's side.
But I don't expect any of his friends are anxious for him to marry an
officer in the Salvation Army. Society people ain't fond of the Army,
and never will be."

"His people--he has only distant relatives living--are all at home,"
Stephen said vaguely. The situation had become slightly confused.

"Then you speak for them, I suppose?"

"Indeed not. I am in no communication with them whatever. I fancy they
know nothing about it. I am here entirely--ENTIRELY of my own accord. I
have come to place myself at your disposition if there is anything I can
do, any word I can say, to the end of preventing this catastrophe in a
spiritual life so pure and devoted; to ask you at all events to let me
join my prayers to yours that it shall not come about."

The squalor of the room seemed to lift before his eyes and be suffused
with light. At last he had made himself plain. But Mrs. Sand was not
transfigured. She seemed to sit, with her hands folded, in the midst of
a calculation.

"Then he HAS put the question. I told her he would," she said.

"I believe he has asked her to marry him and she has refused, more than
once. But he is importunate, and I hear she needs help."

"Mr. Lindsay," said Mrs. Sand, "is a very takin' young man."

"I suppose we must consider that. There is position too, and wealth.
These things count--we are all so human--even against the Divine
realities into possession of which Miss Filbert must have so perfectly
entered."

"I thought he must be pretty well off. Would he be one of them
Government officials?"

"He is a broker."

"Oh, is he indeed?" Mrs. Sand's enlightenment was evidently doubtful.
"Well, if they get married Captain Filbert 'll have to resign. It's
against the regulations for her to marry outside of the Army."

"But is she not vowed to her work; isn't her life turned for ever
into that channel? Would it not be horrible to you to see the world
interfere?"

"I won't say but what I'd be sorry to see her leave us. But I wouldn't
stand in her way either, and neither would Captain Sand."

"Stand in her way! In her way to materi