derstood by all of us. I will not say more
now. This is not the time for any more directions from me. We must
address ourselves, each one of us, to God Himself, and ask Him to
prepare us so that we may be as He would have us on the day of His
coming. I suggest now before we part that we share together in a few
minutes of private prayer." They all rose, and Maggie, before she knelt
down, caught a sudden glimpse of the pale girl whom she had noticed
earlier standing for a moment as though she were about to make some
desperate appeal to them all. Some words did indeed seem to come from
her lips, but the scraping of chairs drowned every other sound.
Nevertheless that figure was there, the hands stretched out, the very
soul struggling through the eyes for expression, the body tense,
sacred, eloquent, like the body of some young prophetess. Then all were
on their knees, and Maggie, too, her face in her hands, was praying. It
was, perhaps, the first time in her life that she had actively,
consciously, of her own volition prayed. The appeal formed itself as it
were without her own agency.

"God--if there is a God--give me Martin. I care for nothing else but
that. If You will give me Martin for my own always, ever, I will
believe in You. I will worship You and say prayers to You, and do
anything You tell me if You give me Martin. Oh God! I ought to have
him. He is mine. I can do more for him than any one else can--I can
make him happy and good. I know I can. God give him to me and I will be
your slave. God, give me Martin--God, give me Martin."

She rose, as it were, from the depths of the sea, from great darkness
and breathlessness and exhaustion. For a moment she could not see the
room nor any detail, but only one pale face after another, like a
pattern on a wall, hiding something from her.

She stood bewildered beside her aunts, not hearing the strains of the
last hymn nor the quaver of Aunt Anne's trembling voice beside her.

"God, give me Martin," was her last challenge in the strange pale
silence that floated around her. Then suddenly, as though she had
pushed open a door and gone through, she was back in the world again, a
flood of sound was about her ears, and in front of her the red face of
Mrs. Smith, her mouth wide open, like the mouth of an eager fish,
singing about "the Blood of the Lamb" with unctuous satisfaction ...

CHAPTER X

THE PROPHET

The year 1907 had four more days of life: it crept to its