prefer a smaller man than
Mercer. He shall be spared if you say so."

"You relieve me," said Winifred, laughing.

But how was she to explain the truth to Frothingham? It was easier to
jest with him than to speak earnestly, and Winifred had an instinctive
feeling, not definitely acknowledged, that to make him understand a
spiritual idea would be impossible.

"But really, Winifred," he went on, "if it is not rude to ask, I should
like to know what great reason makes you desert us now in the very
height of your success, and, I should think, enjoyment?"

Smiles left her face, and a flush of embarrassment deepened in her
cheeks. It was very hard to speak to him of these things--harder than
it had been to any other.

"That is just it," she said slowly. "It has been a success for me,
artistically, and a great enjoyment. But there has been nothing in it
for--for--Christ." She hesitated before the sacred name. Why was it
so hard to speak it before him?

He was silent. They were already by the simple mention of that name in
deeper water, conversationally, than he was accustomed to. She had to
go on.

"I have been convinced," she said, "that it has all been very wrong. I
have been offering to God a pretended worship, when it has really been
the worship of our Art. That must be idolatry, I think. I can't go on
with it."

Winifred stopped decisively, and Frothingham found words to reply with
just a tinge of irony:

"I am afraid you are a bit too metaphysical for me, Winifred. I don't
quite understand you. Do you mean to say singing in the choir is
wrong? If it is, it is a pretty common sin and quite generally
approved of."

"No, it isn't wrong," said Winifred desperately; "at least, it would be
the loveliest thing in the world, I think, if we were all _true
worshipers_, and meant what we sang, and sang to God. But you know it
hasn't been anything of the sort. We have sung for our own pleasure
and the applause of the people."

"And the money, some of us," asserted Frothingham with indifferent
candor. "But I don't see why we should be troubled about it. It's a
part of the machine. It goes to make up the church worship, and a
considerable part of it. I suppose they offer it to the Lord--or
whatever you call it--whether we individual performers mean anything or
not."

Winifred thought of the prayer-wheels. Did the church turn the machine
and grind out praises by proxy? How much merit did they acc