t there, and fear not that I shall prove ungrateful
to Him, to whom my every thought is consecrated."

Lafelle bit his lip. Then he spoke low and earnestly, while he held
his gaze fixed upon the girl's bright eyes. "Miss Carmen, if you knew
that the Church now afforded you the only refuge from the dangers that
threaten, you would turn to her as a frightened child to its mother."

"I fear nothing, Monsignor," replied the girl, her face alight with a
smile of complete confidence. "I am not the kind who may be driven by
fear into acceptance of undemonstrable, unfounded theological beliefs.
Fear has always been a terrible weapon in the hands of those who have
sought to force their opinions upon their fellow-men. But it is
powerless to influence me. Fear, Monsignor, is sin. It causes men to
miss the mark. And it is time-honored. Indeed, according to the Bible
allegory, it began in the very garden of Eden, when poor, deceived
Adam confessed to God that he was afraid. If God was infinite then, as
you admit you believe Him to be now, who or what made Adam afraid?
Whence came the imaginary power of fear? For, 'God hath not given us
the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.'
God is love. And there is no fear in love."

"But, surely, Miss Carmen, you will not stubbornly close your eyes to
threatening evil?"

"Monsignor, I close my eyes to all that is unlike God. He is everything
to me. I know nothing but Him and His perfect manifestation."

Lafelle sat some moments in silence. The picture which he and the
young girl formed was one of rare beauty and interest: he, weighted
with years, white of hair, but rugged of form, with strikingly
handsome features and kindly eyes--she, a child, delicate, almost
wraith-like, glowing with a beauty that was not of earth, and, though
untutored in the wiles of men, still holding at bay the sagacious
representative of a crushing weight of authority which reached far
back through the centuries, even to the Greek and Latin Fathers who
put their still unbroken seal upon the strange elaborations which they
wove out of the simple words of the Nazarene.

When the churchman again looked up and felt himself engulfed in the
boundless love which emanated from that radiant, smiling girl, there
surged up within him a mighty impulse to go to her, to clasp her in
his arms, to fall at her feet and pray for even a mite of her own rare
spirituality. The purpose which he had that morni