? She felt so, as if there
had been some strange metamorphosis.

And that delightful, enchanting week in New York. Oh, how full of
pleasure and happiness the world must be if a few little spaces could
contain so much! And that she could have a share in the real blessedness
of it!

Was that the big clock striking the half hour? One was to stop reading
or studying at that warning and prepare for bed. Dreaming too, tempting
as the picture was.

Helen had always "said her prayers." A wonder as to the real virtue of
this had occasionally crossed her mind. So far she had only known a
religion of habit; like the other habits of life. To-night a new thought
possessed her. Did she owe this simply to Mrs. Van Dorn? If all good and
perfect things came from God then this that was so supremely delightful,
so almost marvelous of its kind must have been put in the kindly heart
by some higher power.

She was curiously awed. Uncle Jason and Aunt Jane were church members,
but religion had very little power in their lives. Yet Aunt Jane brought
up her children to be strictly honest, and any bald falsehood she truly
believed she despised. But injustice or the refusal to see the other
side of the question was not connected in her mind with truthfulness.
Like many other people the things she believed in and wanted, were
right, not only for her, but others must be fitted to the measure. So
Helen knew very little of the higher meaning of the word.

Mrs. Van Dorn paid a general outward respect to religion when she was
with a certain kind of people, but she was of a sort of heathen who make
gods for themselves. Her life was to be enjoyment now, since the early
part of it had been hard and comfortless. If it had not been right, a
form of reward for those dreary early years it would not have come to
her. She thought it bad taste to array herself against beliefs that
pervaded the world so largely. All sorts of disbelief coarsened women.
She had listened to one great woman speaker who afterward became an
Anarchist, and who even then denounced nearly all the moral precepts and
attacked modern marriage, and was really shocked. She liked to keep what
she called reverence for sacred things. And it pleased her to play
Providence to people now and then, and impress it delicately on the
recipients that they need look no farther than herself for the giver of
their good.

But to-night Helen felt there was some power beyond, and she gave thanks
sincer