aid Max, "has a very subtle effect upon the character. At a
fancy-dress ball, last season, I wore a Cardinal's robe--there is a
portrait of one in the British National Gallery rather like me--and it
took me a month to get rid of the effects. If I turn into a Socialist,
therefore, it will be upon your advice."

"As far as politics go it matters very little what you turn into," said
Sister Jenifer.

"What a statement!" exclaimed Max.

"It is perfectly true," she said. "At present what we are fighting is
ignorance and indifference; in comparison to that the mere theory of
government doesn't matter, for nothing is going to succeed while one
half of society neither knows nor cares how the other half lives. Your
politicians are welcome to any theories they can find tenable, if only
they will face facts."

"What are your own politics?"

"I haven't any; I haven't room for them. My only aim is just to get that
one half of the community to come and look with understanding at the
other half; and then service, I know, would follow. It won't until they
do."

"Well, you are making me look," said Max.

"Yet I have not been able to make my father."

"Has he never been here?"

"He has opened churches."

"Well, you believe in prayer."

"That depends on how you define it."

"I wanted to ask you that. You are only a lay-sister; but some of you
have taken vows--for a period, at all events."

"That is all the Church allows; but it makes little difference since
they can always renew."

"Those who have taken vows--do they give themselves entirely up to
prayer?"

"No, but they entirely depend upon it."

"Depend--how?"

"They could not do their work without it. You asked me for definition: I
can only give you example. Some of our sisters quite literally cannot
face what they have to do except after prayer; otherwise their flesh
would revolt."

"Is it such horrible work?"

"They will not tell you so; but I know that it must be. You see I am
rather an outsider. My father only allowed me to come here on certain
conditions; and with the inner side of our work here I have nothing to
do; I understand nothing about it."

Her face flushed slightly under his gaze, the faint, troubled flush of
maidenhood which apprehends an evil of which it may not know the
conditions; and he saw by swift intuition that this sincere spirit was
ashamed of its own ignorance. His mind darted a guess that he had before
him, in fact, an inexperienc