w could I explain myself?"

Then she reflected that she would study to be earnest, that she would
school herself to think of Him and sing to Him. She took her hymn-book
and found the place of the last hymn, resolved to put sincerity in
practice at once. It was chosen, without reference to the unexpected
sermon, and was the well-known psalm of love and longing which earnest
souls have sung for many years:

"For thee, O dear, dear country,
Mine eyes their vigils keep;
For very love, beholding
Thy happy name they weep.
The mention of Thy glory
Is unction to the breast,
And medicine in sickness,
And love, and life, and rest."

"I cannot sing it!" Winifred almost sobbed to herself. "It is not
true--to me."

Then she read on. Before, she would have been carried away with the
rhythm and the graceful thought. But now as she read:

"Oh, sweet and blessed country That eager hearts expect!"

"It's not true--it's not true!" she thought. "I cannot sing these
songs. I know nothing of their sentiment. I am not a true worshiper
of the Father. I do not believe I know Him!"

Then Winifred covered her eyes with her hand. "'Thou desirest truth in
the inward parts,'" the preacher was quoting.

The words sent a pang through her heart. "God has found no truth in
me," she thought, "I have been a lie."

Then she sat in wretchedness, fighting back the tears that struggled to
escape--tears of shame, remorse, wounded self-love, and grief that her
favorite idol, a god whom she did know and had served well, was to be
taken down from its niche in the house of the Lord and cast out. She
heard little of the remainder of the sermon, and what she heard added
to her misery; for it told of the joy of true worshipers when at last
they should stand face to face with Him whom, having not seen, they
love,--

"All rapture through and through
In God's most holy sight."

The sense of isolation, of exclusion from it all, was very painful; and
Winifred did not know that this very knowledge of exclusion, and its
grief, were harbingers of eternally better things. She stood with the
others as they sang the closing hymn, and her own silence was
unobserved, as she did not always join the chorus. She had recovered
her composure by the time the benediction was pronounced and the organ
was yielding an unusually lively postlude to whose strains she and
George Frothingham descended the stairs together.

"The old chap is a