us up that night in the train and gave her the alternative of going
back with them and kissing him or seeing me dead at her feet. I didn't
give her time to answer, nor for them to finish. It seemed a fine death
anyhow, that. And I'd have faced Hell itself for the chance of fighting
for her. Though she told me afterwards that if I'd died she'd have gone
back with them, and killed him."

Joan did not speak for a time. She could see him grave--a little
pompous, in his Sunday black, his footsteps creaking down the
stone-flagged aisle, the silver-edged collecting bag held stiffly in his
hand.

"Couldn't you have saved a bit, Daddy?" she asked, "of all that wealth of
youth--just enough to live on?"

"I might," he answered, "if I had known the value of it. I found a cable
waiting for me in New York. My father had been dead a month; and I had
to return immediately."

"And so you married her and took her drum away from her," said Joan. "Oh,
the thing God gives to some of us," she explained, "to make a little
noise with, and set the people marching."

The little flame died out. She could feel his body trembling.

"But you still loved her, didn't you, Dad?" she asked. "I was very
little at the time, but I can just remember. You seemed so happy
together. Till her illness came."

"It was more than love," he answered. "It was idolatry. God punished me
for it. He was a hard God, my God."

She raised herself, putting her hands upon his shoulders so that her face
was very close to his. "What has become of Him, Dad?" she said. She
spoke in a cold voice, as one does of a false friend.

"I do not know," he answered her. "I don't seem to care."

"He must be somewhere," she said: "the living God of love and hope: the
God that Christ believed in."

"They were His last words, too," he answered: "'My God, my God, why hast
Thou forsaken me?'"

"No, not His last," said Joan: "'Lo, I am with you always, even unto the
end of the world.' Love was Christ's God. He will help us to find Him."

Their arms were about one another. Joan felt that a new need had been
born in her: the need of loving and of being loved. It was good to lay
her head upon his breast and know that he was glad of her coming.

He asked her questions about herself. But she could see that he was
tired; so she told him it was too important a matter to start upon so
late. She would talk about herself to-morrow. It would be Sunday.

"Do you sti