id to you, Carmen?" persisted Hitt, his face dark
with anger.

The girl smiled feebly. "I see Mr. Ames only as--as God's child," she
murmured. "Evil is not real, and it doesn't happen. Now I want to
work--work as I never did before! I must! _I must!_"

"Will you not tell me more about it?" he asked, for he knew now that a
deadly thrust had been made at the girl's life.

She brushed the tears away from her eyes. "It didn't happen," was her
reply. "Good is all that is. God is life. There is _no_ death!"

A suspicion flashed into Hitt's mind, kindled by the girl's insistence
upon the nothingness of death. "Carmen," he asked, "did he tell you
that--some one had died?"

She came to him and laid her head against him. Her hands stole into
his. "Don't! Please, Mr. Hitt! We must never speak of this again!
Promise me! I shall overcome it, for God is with me. Promise that no
one but us shall know! Make Sidney promise. It--it is--for me."

The man's eyes grew moist, and his throat filled. He drew the girl to
him and kissed her forehead. "It shall be as you wish, little one," he
said in a choking voice.

"Now set me to work!" she cried wildly. "Anything! This is another
opportunity to--to prove God! I must prove Him! I must--right here!"

He turned to his desk with a heavy heart. "There is work to be done
now," he said. "I wonder--"

She took the telegram from his hands and scanned it. At once she
became calm, her own sorrow swallowed up in selfless love. "Oh, they
have gone out at Avon! Those mothers and children--they need me! Mr.
Hitt, I must go there at once!"

"I thought so," he replied, swallowing hard. "I knew what you would
do. But you are in higher hands than mine, Carmen. Go home now, and
get ready. You can go down in the morning. And we, Sidney and I, will
say nothing of--of your visit to his father."

* * * * *

That night Hitt called up the Beaubien and asked if he and Haynerd
might come and talk with her after the paper had gone to press, and
requesting that she notify Carmen and Father Waite. A few hours later
the little group met quietly in the humble cottage. Miss Wall and
Sidney were with them. And to them all those first dark hours of
morning, when as yet the symbol of God's omnipresence hung far below
the horizon, seemed prescient with a knowledge of evil's further
claims to the lives and fortunes of men.

"I have asked you here," Hitt gravely announced wh