d he knew it. Her vitality, her
insistence had carried him with her despite himself,--that and an odd
under-current of something he could not entirely explain. He might have
called it faith, only it was not faith as he had been accustomed to think
of it, when he thought at all. It was so infinitely more alive and
personal. And yet she had only once touched on what he would have termed
religion.

"You've wandered entirely from the object of your visit," he had remarked
at one point in the conversation, "and I can't for the life of me see why
you are taking this extraordinary interest in what you consider my
welfare. What on earth can it matter to any one else, how I choose to
live my life?"

"Ah, but it does matter," she had answered earnestly, "it matters quite
supremely. I know we often pretend to ourselves that it doesn't in the
least matter how we live our lives so long as we don't commit actual sin;
but we can't isolate ourselves from others without loss to them and to
ourselves."

"How about monks and nuns, who shut themselves up, and never see their
fellow-creatures at all?" he had retorted, greatly pleased with himself
for the retort.

Trix had opened eyes of wonder.

"The contemplative orders! Why, Mr. Danver, they're the cog-wheels of the
whole machinery. They only keep their bodies apart that their minds may
be more free. Nobody has the good of mankind so much at heart as a
contemplative. They are keeping the machinery going by prayer the whole
time."

The utter conviction in her words was unmistakable. For an odd flashing
moment he had had something like a mental vision of an irresistible force
pouring forth from those closed houses, a force like the force of a great
river, carrying all things with it, and with healing virtue in its
waters. The thought was utterly foreign to him. But it had been there.

"I am not much of a believer in prayer," he had said dryly. He had
expected her to ask if he had ever tried it. She had not done so.

"Most of us do it so badly," she had said with a little sigh, "but they
don't." And then she had flashed a glance of amusement at him. "Did you
ever hear of the story of the old lady who said she was going to pray one
night with entire faith that the hill beyond her garden might be removed?
In the morning she found it still there. 'I knew it would be!' said the
old lady triumphantly."

Nicholas joined in her laugh, but somewhat grimly.

"We're all like that," he sai