, lady," he answered once more, in the same quiet
tone of conviction.

"But I want all I do to be the best for the purpose that can be done."

She put some money in his hand and turned away, and as she went he
watched her. She had touched him with her soft gloveless fingers in
giving him the money, and when she had gone, he was conscious of the
touch; it tingled through him, and he looked at the spot on which the
impression remained, as if he expected it to be in some sort visible.

"Now Our Lady love you and the saints protect you, bless your sweet
face," he muttered; "and may all you do be the best that can be done
for every one. Amen."

* * * * *

A few months in her lovely little house sufficed to restore Beth's
mind to its natural attitude--an attitude of deep devotion. She even
began to work again, but rather with a view to making herself useful
to her friends than to satisfy any ambition or craving of her own.
Whatever she did, however, she approached in the spirit of the great
musician who dressed himself in his best, and prayed as at a solemn
service, when he shut himself up to compose. Beth had stepped away
from the old forms by this time. She had escaped from the bondage of
the letter that killeth into the realm of the spirit that giveth life.
It is not faith in any particular fetish that makes a mind religious,
but the quality of reverence. Churches Beth had come to look upon, not
with distrust, but with indifference, as an ineffectual experiment of
man's. She could find no evidence of a holier spirit or a more divine
one in the church than in any other human institution for the
propagation of instruction. The church has never been superior to the
times, never as far advanced as the best men of the day, never a
leader, but rather an opposer of progress, hindering when ideas were
new, and only coming in to help when workers without had proved their
discoveries, and it was evident that credit would be lost by refusing
to recognise them. There is no cruelty the church has not practised,
no sin it has not committed, no ignorance it has not displayed, no
inconsistency it has not upheld, from teaching peace and countenancing
war, to preaching poverty and piling up riches. True, there have been
great saints in the church; but then there have been great saints out
of it. Saintliness comes of conscientiously cultivating the divine in
human nature; it is a seed that is sown and flou