er time. Patricia had taken refuge in
her habitual breakfast silence and, finding that they could draw
nothing from her her fellow-guests had proceeded to discuss the matter
among themselves. It was with a feeling of relief that Patricia rose
from the table.

There was an east wind blowing, and Patricia had always felt that an
east wind made her a materialist. This morning she was depressed;
there was in her heart a feeling that fate had not been altogether kind
to her. Her childhood had been spent in a small town on the East Coast
under the care of her father's sister who, when Mrs. Brent died, had
come to keep house for Mr. John Brent and take care of his
five-year-old daughter. In her aunt Patricia found a woman soured by
life. What it was that had soured her Patricia could never gather; but
Aunt Adelaide was for ever emphasizing the fact that men were beasts.

Later Patricia saw in her aunt a disappointed woman. She could
remember as a child examining with great care her aunt's hard features
and angular body, and wondering if she had ever been pretty, and if
anyone had kissed her because they wanted to and not because it was
expected of them.

The lack of sympathy between aunt and niece had driven Patricia more
and more to seek her father's companionship. He was a silent man,
little given to emotion or demonstration of affection. He loved
Patricia, but lacked the faculty of conveying to her the knowledge of
his love.

As she walked across the Park Patricia came to the conclusion that, for
some reason or other, love, or the outward visible signs of love, had
been denied her. Warm-hearted, impetuous, spontaneous, she had been
chilled by the self-repression of her father, and the lack of affection
of her aunt. She had been schooled to regard God as the God of
punishment rather than the God of love. One of her most terrifying
recollections was that of the Sundays spent under the paternal roof.
To her father, religion counted for nothing; but to her aunt it counted
for everything in the world; the hereafter was to be the compensation
for renunciation in this world. Miss Brent's attitude towards prayer
was that of one who regards it as a means by which she is able to
convey to the Almighty what she expects of Him in the next world as a
reward for what she has done, or rather not done, in this.

Patricia had once asked, in a childish moment of speculation, "But,
Aunt Adelaide, suppose God doesn't make us