Ames had now decided to swallow his annoyance and meet the girl with
the lance of frivolity. "Yes, I guess that's so," he began. "But of
course you will admit that the world is slowly getting better, and
that world-progress must of necessity be gradual. We can't reform all
in a minute, can we?"

She shook her head. "I don't know how fast you might reform if you
really, sincerely tried. But I think it would be very fast. And if
you, a great, big, powerful man, with the most wonderful opportunities
in the world, should really try to be a success, why--well, I'm sure
you'd make very rapid progress, and help others like you by setting
such a great example. For you are a wonderful man--you really are."

Ames looked at her long and quizzically. What did the girl mean? Then
he took her hand, this time without resistance.

"Tell me, little girl--although I know there can be no doubt of
it--are you a success?"

She raised her luminous eyes to his. "Yes," she replied simply.

He let fall her hand in astonishment. "Well!" he ejaculated, "would
you mind telling me just why?"

She smiled up at him, and her sweet trustfulness drew his sagging
heartstrings suddenly taut.

"Because," she said simply, "I strive every moment to 'acquire that
mind which was in Christ Jesus.'"

Silence fell upon them. From amusement to wonder, to irritation, to
anger, then to astonishment, and a final approximation to something
akin to reverent awe had been the swift course of the man's emotions
as he sat in this secluded nook beside this strange girl. The
poisoned arrows of his worldly thought had broken one by one against
the shield of her protecting faith. His badinage had returned to
confound himself. The desire to possess had utterly fled before the
conviction that such thought was as wildly impossible as iniquitous.

Then he suddenly became conscious that the little body beside him had
drawn closer--that it was pressing against him--that a little hand had
stolen gently into his--and that a soft voice, soft as the summer
winds that sigh among the roses, was floating to his ears.

"To be really great is to be like that wonderful man, Jesus. It is to
know that through him the great Christ-principle worked and did those
things which the world will not accept, because it thinks them
miracles. It is to know that God is love, and to act that knowledge.
It is to know that love is the Christ-principle, and that it will
destroy every error, ever