sincerity of her faith had angered him, though
anything else, had he detected it, would have destroyed his dream; and
when he had scoffed she had not troubled to rebuke him, had only glanced
at him amused, not with pity or condescension or kind Christian charity,
but with a very friendly understanding and often with what seemed
agreement. He was astonished to find that a rippling sense of humor
could go hand in hand with a blind gift of faith, and to hear sayings as
bold as his own uttered as though they were the merest common-sense.
"Why yes, of course," she admitted, in answer to one of his tirades, "if
you want envy, hatred, and uncharitableness in a concentrated form you
will find them in the Church; that stands to reason." And when he
inquired why, she answered, quite simply, "Because a bad Christian is
Satan's best material."

Nor had she any illusions about that particular branch of the Church
militant for which she labored; she regarded it rather as a half-baked
body of territorials than a regular army equipped for the field. Still
it served a purpose, gave useful occupation to many, and stood for the
time being against unreasoning panic or callous desertion of duty; nor
would she surrender its few poor healing virtues for any of the nostrums
he sought to set in their place. "It does more than you with all your
talking," she said quietly, and, as they passed by, took him into a
mission church where he might see--a small corrugated iron hut, set down
in the midst of slums. Under the scent of incense the smell of
disinfectants was strong; near a stove sat a lay reader, and about her a
dozen poor weary women plying needle and thread. Two or three of them
held children at the breast; in a pen near by lay half-a-dozen others
asleep. Over the stove was a large boiler supplying hot water to poor
parishioners; away by a small side altar knelt a single figure in
prayer. Brightly colored "stations of the Cross," and something upon the
altar that looked like a large tea-cozy, before which burned a light,
told how here the law was systematically broken, and that the "nonsense"
inveighed against by the old Queen Regent had not yet been put down.

"That is the bit of Christianity I work for," she said as she led him
out again, "a sort of mother-hen whose cluckings, scratchings, and
incubations are run in a parish of five thousand half-starved people on
less than L300 a year. Have you anything better to show?"

"I want revol