?" John inquired,
forcing a lifeless smile.

"I hardly know," Tilly said, as she studied his face with bland
sincerity. "It almost frightened me. I was afraid father would forget
himself and storm out at you. But--but as for your reading out loud, of
course, if you really do not believe in the Bible and love it, you ought
not to read it in public. That would be sacrilege."

"And do you believe in it?" he demanded, almost rebukingly. "Do you
believe that that Book is the actual word of some far-off God that no
living man ever saw with his eyes or heard speak with his ears?"

"Yes," Tilly answered. "If I didn't believe it I'd be miserable. I can't
see how you can doubt the existence of God--how you can keep from
actually feeling His presence, especially when you are in trouble and
seriously need His help."

John sneered. He loved Tilly with his whole being, but he despised her
belief. "I can tell you why I don't believe," he said, a billow of
feeling behind his words. "I believe if there were a God, that God would
have to be a God of love, power, and pity, and with my own eyes I've
seen-- I have told you about that little orphan girl at home, Dora
Boyles. She is a little, helpless, overworked rat without father or
mother, in the care of an aunt who is no earthly good--and is crazy
about men--crazy about clothes, cards, liquor, and dancing. That little
dirty scrap of a girl is a child of God, the same as those polite,
well-fed, well-dressed girls and boys we met last night, eh? Well, tell
me what is God doing for her? As for me, myself, as I look back on what
I went through among those haughty, hidebound people at Ridgeville,
before Sam Cavanaugh held out a helping hand-- Well, never mind about
that, but I know I've been my own God, and I never run across any other
except in the dreams of persons who get the best things of life and
don't care whether anybody else gets them or not."

"You will think otherwise some day--you will _have_ to," was Tilly's
regretful ultimatum. "Someday you will need God so badly that you will
turn to Him. I did once, and was answered, too."

"You don't mean it," John disputed, warmly. "No prayer was ever answered
by any God, on the earth or off of it."

"Mine was," Tilly asseverated. "It was one night, and I was at home all
alone. Father had lost his temper at an election and--and wounded a man
in a dispute. Father was put in jail and mother hurried to him. The man
was bleeding to death-