an face with her hands.

"How am I to give him up?" she asked. "How shall I bear it? I get so
unhappy. I asked my little boy the other day what he did when I went
away from home. He said--'I gather chestnuts and feel lonely.' And I
asked my little girl what she did, and she said--'I cry till you come
back again.' There's the difference between men and women. I am like my
poor Lilian. You, Sara, if you could be wretched, would be more like the
boy."

"Do you think so?" said Sara.

"That wonderful passage in the New Testament--I often remember it! After
all the agony and separation were over, Simon Peter said to the
disciples, _I go a fishing_. He went back to the work he was doing when
our Lord first called him. What courage!"

"Go on," said Sara, "go on!"

"Of course, my heart has been taking an undue complacency in the
creature, and this seldom fails to injure. I have a wish to be free from
distress, and enjoy life. As if we were born to be happy! No, this world
is a school to discipline souls and fit them for the other. I must
forget my friend."

"Nonsense!"

"It will be very hard. I took such an interest in his career. If I
didn't mention him to you, or to other people, I mentioned him often to
God. And now--it is somewhat awkward."

"You little goose," said Sara, "you have a heart of crystal. Nothing
could be awkward for you."

"My heart," said Pensee, with a touch of resentment, "is just as
dangerous and wicked as any other heart! You misunderstand me wilfully.
I like prayer at all times, because it is a help and because it lifts
one out of the world. Oh, when shall every thought be brought into
captivity?"

"Listen!" said Sara, "listen! If there is an attractiveness in human
beings so lovely that it could call your Almighty God Himself from
heaven to dwell among them and to die most cruelly for their sakes, is
it to be expected that they will not--and who will dare say that they
should not?--as mortals themselves, discover qualities in each other
which draw out the deepest affection? I have no patience with your
religion--none."

"You are most unkind, and I won't tell you any more," replied Pensee,
who looked, however, not ungrateful for Sara's view of the situation.

"Let me tell you something about me," said her friend fiercely. "I never
say my prayers, because I cannot say them, but I love somebody, too.
Whenever I hear his name I could faint. When I see him I could sink into
the ground. At the