cannot distinguish between what
they have done and what they have only dreamt they did, and probably
every race has gone through that stage of development. I don't know if
excessive piety be a disease of the nerves, as some say, although what
is piety in one generation does appear to be perversity in the next,
as witness the sons of the clergy, and other children of pious people,
who don't answer to expectation, as a rule. And I don't go much on
churches or creeds, or faith in this personality or that. The old
ideas have lost their hold upon me, as they have upon you; but that is
no reason why we should give up the old truths that have been in the
world for all time, the positive right and wrong, which are facts, not
ideas. I believe that there is good and evil, that the one is at war
with the other always; and that good can do no evil, evil no good.
I've got beyond all the dogma and fiddle-faddle of the intellect with
which the church has overlaid the spirit, and all the ceremonial so
useful and necessary for individual souls in early stages of
development. I used to think if I could find a religion with no blood
in it, I would embrace it. Now I feel sure that it does not matter
what the expression of our religious nature is so that it be
religious. Religion is an attitude of mind, the attitude of prayer,
which includes reverence for things holy and deep devotion to them. I
would not lose that for anything--the right of appeal; but now, when I
think of our Father in heaven, I do not despise our mother on earth."

Beth sat some time looking thoughtfully into the fire. "Go to sleep,"
she said at last, abruptly. "You ought not to be talking at this time
of night."

"I wish you would go to sleep yourself," he said, as he settled
himself obediently; "for I lose half the comfort of being saved, while
you sit up there suffering for me."

The expression was not too strong for the strain Beth had to put upon
herself in those days; for she had no help. Ethel Maud Mary and
Gwendolen felt for her and her patient, as they said; but there of
necessity their kindness ended. The other lodgers kept Gwendolen for
ever running to and fro; each seemed to think she had nobody else to
look after, and it was seldom indeed that any of them noticed her
weariness or took pity on her. Beth did everything for herself,
fetched the coals from the cellar, the water from the bath-room, swept
and dusted, cleaned the grate, ran out to do the shoppin