Do say what you think of it, Winifred? Don't be so
unecstatic."

Winifred smiled, not very merrily. "I can't get ecstatic," she said.
"I shall not be in it."

"You will not be in it!" Adele cried. "Oh, why not?"--coaxingly.
"Doesn't your father approve of it?--or your mother?--of going off like
that, I mean? It will be perfectly proper. We shall be chaperoned."

"Oh, that's not it," said Winifred. "I have left the choir."

Adele opened her bright eyes wide in astonishment.

"Left the choir!" she exclaimed under her breath, and then leaned back
in her chair with a gesture of comical despair of expressing herself.

Winifred could not help laughing at her friend's dismay. She said
nothing and Adele soon recovered herself.

"A little tiff with the leader or somebody?" she queried. "Such things
are not unknown to us. I am prepared to take your part, Winnie, right
or wrong. But you don't mean you've left for good? Oh, come and sing
with us at St. John's--that would be lovely!"

Winifred girded herself mentally for her task. She and lively Miss
Forrester had never discussed spiritual things together. They spoke
freely of their choirs and of church, but that never seemed dissonant
with the most frivolous social things. Now as Winifred thought of the
real Holy Place and the worship there "in spirit and in truth," it
seemed difficult to speak of it. She began bravely, and began at the
beginning, with Mr. Bond's sermon. She rehearsed many of the things
that he said, and told frankly of her own conviction of the truth and
how it troubled her. Adele listened gravely and with a sympathetic
moisture in her eyes as Winifred told, with little hitches in her voice
and evident effort at self-control, of her determination to leave the
theater of her unreal worship, and then of the way she had found into
the real presence of God and of His forgiveness. She paused here, and
Adele put her arms impulsively about her and kissed her.

"Winnie," she said, "you know I always loved you. I love you better
than ever now."

Then they both cried, though they could not have explained to each
other why. Adele was the first to recover herself.

"I am such a goose," she said. "I always cry. But now, Winnie," she
added, "are you not going to keep on singing, only 'in spirit and in
truth,' as you say?"

"I hope I shall keep on singing," said Winifred, slowly, "but I dare
not trust myself, just now anyhow, to go on with t