winter. Why is it so difficult for all of us to know
what to do?"

"We have taken a step forward, at any rate, when we know that it is
difficult," he said.

She gazed up at him fixedly, her attention caught by an indefinable
something in his voice, in his smile, that thrilled and vaguely disturbed
her. She remembered it long afterwards. It suddenly made her shy again;
as if, in faring forth into the darkness, she had come to the threshold
of a mystery, of a revelation withheld; and it brought back the sense of
adventure, of the palpitating fear and daring with which she had come to
meet him.

"It is something to know," she repeated, half comprehending. The
scraping of chairs within alarmed her, and she stood ready to fly.

"But I haven't thanked you for this," he said, holding up the envelope.
"It may be that I shall find some one in Dalton Street--"

"Oh, I hope so," she faltered, breathlessly, hesitating a moment. And
then she was gone, into the house.

THE INSIDE OF THE CUP

By Winston Churchill

Volume 3.

IX. THE DIVINE DISCONTENT
X. THE MESSENGER IN THE CHURCH
XI. THE LOST PARISHIONER
XII. THE WOMAN OF THE SONG

CHAPTER IX

THE DIVINE DISCONTENT

I

It was the last Sunday in May, and in another week the annual flight to
the seashore and the mountains would have begun again. The breezes
stealing into the church through the open casements wafted hither and
thither the odours of the chancel flowers, and mingled with those fainter
and subtler perfumes set free by the rustling of summer gowns.

As on this day he surveyed his decorous and fashionable congregation,
Hodder had something of that sense of extremity which the great apostle
to the Gentiles himself must have felt when he stood in the midst of the
Areopagus and made his vain yet sublime appeal to Athenian indifference
and luxury. "And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now
commandeth all men everywhere to repent." . . Some, indeed, stirred
uneasily as the rector paused, lowering their eyes before the intensity
of his glance, vaguely realizing that the man had flung the whole passion
of his being into the appeal.

Heedlessness--that was God's accusation against them, against the age.
Materialism, individualism! So absorbed were they in the pursuit of
wealth, of distraction, so satisfied with the current philosophy, so
intent on surrounding themselves with beautiful things and thus shutting
out the