t more could a
girl want?"

"What she wanted," said Katie passionately, "was life."

The word spoken as Katie spoke it had suggestion of unholy things. "But
God is life," he said.

Suddenly Katie's eyes blazed. "God! Well it's my opinion that you know
just as little about _Him_ as you do about 'life.'"

It was doubtless the most dumbfounded moment of the Reverend Saunders'
life. His jaw dropped. But only to come together the tighter. "Young
woman," said he, "I am a servant of God. I have served Him all my days."

"Heaven pity Him!" said Katie, and rocked and her chair squeaked
savagely.

He rose. "I cannot permit such language to be used in my house."

Katie gave no heed. "I'll tell you why your daughter left. She left
because you _starved_ her.

"Above your head is a motto. The motto says, 'God Is Love.' I could
almost fancy somebody hung that in this house as a _joke_!

"You see you don't know anything about love. That's why you don't know
anything about God--or life--or Ann.

"In this universe of mysterious things," Katie went on, "it so
happened--as you have remarked, God's ways are indeed inscrutable--that
unto you was born a child ordained for love."

She paused, held herself by the mystery of that.

And as she contemplated the mystery of it her wrath against him fell
strangely away. Telling him what she thought of him suddenly ceased to be
the satisfying thing she had anticipated. It was all too mysterious.

It grew so large and so strange that it did not seem a matter the
Reverend Saunders had much to do with it. Telling him what she
thought of him was not the thing interesting her then. What
interested her was wondering why he was as he was. How it had all
happened. What it all meant.

Her wondering almost drew her to him; certainly it gave her a new
approach. "Oh isn't it a pity!" was what Katie said next. And there was
pain and feeling and almost sympathy in her voice as she repeated, "Isn't
it a pity!"

He, too, spoke differently--more humanly. "Isn't--what a pity?"

"That we bungle it so! That we don't seem to know anything about
each other.

"Why I suppose you _didn't_ know--you simply didn't have it _in_ you to
know--that the way she needed to serve God was by laughing and dancing!"

He was both outraged and drawn. He neither rebuked nor agreed. He waited.

"You see it was this way. You were one thing; she was another thing. And
neither of you had any way of getting at the thing th