understand
Our Lord's sacrifice, Mr. Jerrolds, and what it did for them, and
surely if they, thieves and drunkards and--and worse, can be so
touched, Mrs. Bradley...."

"Perhaps," I suggested as gently as I could, "it is just because Mrs.
Bradley is neither a thief nor a drunkard nor worse, dear Miss Jencks,
that she does not feel the necessity for weeping. The emotionalism of
the convert is a curious thing, and the sense of sin together with
vague memories of that Story, connected with childhood and childhood's
innocence, may produce a state of mind responsible for a great deal
that we could hardly expect from Mrs. Bradley."

"But we are all sinners, Mr. Jerrolds!" Again I bowed.

"Surely you believe this, Mr. Jerrolds?"

"I should not care for the task of convincing Mrs. Bradley of it," I
replied dexterously.

"That was the trouble," she admitted mournfully. "I told her about
Adam and Eve, but she said that whatever they had done was no affair
of hers, and it could not be wrong to eat apples, anyway, she told me,
they were so good for the voice."

I choked a little here.

"She is very literal," I said hastily, "and the apple has symbolised
discord in more than one mythology."

"I showed her that beautiful picture of the Crucifixion," Miss Jencks
added in a low, troubled voice, "and do you know, Mr. Jerrolds, she
refused to look at it or hear about it as soon as she understood! She
said it was an ugly story and the picture made her hands cold. She
said it could do no good to kill anyone because _she_ had done wrong.
'Religion is too bloody, Miss Jencks,' she said. 'I do not think I
like it. If I were you I should try to forget it.' Isn't it terrible,
Mr. Jerrolds?"

Poor Barbara Jencks! You were an Englishwoman and it was twenty years
ago!

"Leave thou thy sister when she prays," says the poet, and with all
due respect for his presumable nobility of intention, it is certainly
the easiest course to pursue! I left Miss Jencks.

She followed me a little later, however, and told me that she was not
entirely without hopes, for Margarita had been greatly taken with the
Revelation of St. John the Divine, and had committed to memory whole
chapters of it, with incredible rapidity, saying that it would make
beautiful music. That very evening she sang it to us, or rather,
chanted it, striking chords of inexpressible dignity and beauty on the
piano--the pure Gregorian--by way of accompaniment. It was impossible
tha