iour died for me,
On the cross! On the cross!
He bore my sins at Calvary,
On the rugged cross!"

She sang softly, her body thrust a little forward in a tender swaying--

"Behold His hands and feet and side,
The crown of thorns, the crimson tide,
'Forgive them, Father!' loud He cried,
On the rugged cross!"

"Oh, thank you!" Miss Howe exclaimed. Then she murmured again, "That's
just what I mean."

A blankness came over the girl's face as a light cloud will cross the
moon. She regarded Hilda from behind it, with penetrant anxiety. "Did
you really enjoy that hymn?" she asked.

"Indeed I did."

"Then, dear Miss Howe, I think you cannot be very far from the Kingdom."

"I? Oh, I have my part in a kingdom." Her voice caressed the idea. "And
the curious thing is that we are all aristocrats who belong to it. Not
the vulgar kind, you understand--but no, you don't understand. You'll
have to take my word for it." Miss Howe's eyes sought a red hibiscus
flower that looked in at the window half drowned in sunlight, and the
smile in them deepened.

"Is it the Kingdom of God and His righteousness?" Laura Filbert's clear
glance was disturbed by a ray of curiosity, but the inflexible quality
of her tone more than counterbalanced this.

"There's nothing about it in the Bible, if that's what you mean. And yet
I think the men who wrote 'The time of the singing of birds has come,'
and 'I will lift mine eyes unto the hills,' must have belonged to it."
She paused, with an odd look of discomfiture. "But one shouldn't talk
about things like that--it takes the bloom off. Don't you feel that way
about your privileges now and then? Don't they look rather dusty and
battered to you after a day's exposure in Bow Bazar?"

There came a light crunch of wheels on the red soorkee drive outside,
and a switch past the bunch of sword-ferns that grew beside the door.
The muffled crescendo of steps on the stair and the sound of an inquiry
penetrated from beyond the portiere, and without further preliminary
Duff Lindsay came into the room.

"Do I interrupt a rehearsal?" he asked; but there was nothing in the way
he walked across the room to Hilda Howe to suggest that the idea abashed
him. For her part she rose and made one short step to meet him, and then
received him as it were with both hands and all her heart.

"How ridiculous you are!" she cried. "Of course not. And let me tell you
it is very nic