to himself, so she felt ashamed of the emotion that she could not
help. She wiped the tears away secretly, and was glad that the night was
dark and the need for haste great, for the steamer's warning whistle
could already be beard. Marion talked on as they went down the hill, not
alone now but accompanied by hundreds, talked precisely as she had
before the singing of those words and the prayer. "How could she?"
Flossy wondered. "How could anything look the same to her?" The Spirit
had found no softened heart in which to leave a message, and so had
passed by. This, if Flossy had known it, was the reason that Marion was
gay and indifferent. If either of them had fully realized the reason for
the different effect of the meeting upon them, how startled they would
have been! It is not strange after all that a service is not the same to
one soul that it is to another, when we remember that God speaks to one
and passes another.
The night was still heavy with clouds, not a star to lighten the gloom;
a fine mist was falling. It was Marion who shivered this time, and said:
"It is a horrible night, that is a fact; but I am not sorry we went.
That meeting will write up splendidly, though it was too long; I will
say that in print about it. You must find some fault, you know, when
you are writing for the public; it is the fashion."
"Was it long?" said Flossy, in an absent tone. She had not thought of it
in that way. Then she went to the side of the boat again and sat down in
a tumult. What was the matter with her? Where had her complacent, pretty
little content gone? Would she _always_ feel so sad and anxious and
unhappy, have such a longing as she did now? If she had been wiser she
could have told herself that the trouble of heart was caused by an
unhealthy excitement upon this question, and that this was the great
fault with religious meetings; but she was not wise, she did not think
of such a reason. If it had been suggested to her it is doubtful if, in
her ignorance, she would not have said: "Why, she had been more excited
at an evening party a hundred times than she had thought of being then!"
She actually did not know that eagerness and zeal are proper enough at
parties, but utterly out of place in religion. Just in front of her sat
a young man who hummed in undertone the closing words of the covenant
song. It brought the tears again to Flossy's eyes. He turned suddenly
toward her.
"It was a pleasant service," he said. "
|