ert as a
feature of it.

"Don't be too sure," she cried; "I am very happy. It is such a pleasure
to see you."

Her gaze embraced Miss Filbert as a person, and Miss Filbert as a
pictorial fact, but that was because she could not help it. Her eyes
were really engaged only with the latter Miss Filbert.

"Much happier than you are," Laura repeated, slowly moving her head from
side to side as if to negative contradiction in advance. She smiled too;
it was as if she had remembered a former habit, from politeness.

"Of course you are--of course!" Miss Howe acknowledged. The words were
mellow and vibrant; her voice seemed to dwell upon them with a kind of
rich affection. Her face covered itself with serious sweetness. "I can
imagine the beatitudes you feel--by your clothes."

The girl drew her feet under her, and her hand went up to the only
semi-conventional item of her attire. It was a brooch that exclaimed in
silver letters "Glory to His Name!" "It is the dress of the Army in this
country," she said; "I would not change it for the wardrobe of a queen."

"That's just what I mean." Miss Howe leaned back in her chair with her
head among its cushions, and sent her words fluently across the room,
straight and level with the glance from between her half-closed eyelids.
A fine sensuous appreciation of the indolence it was possible to enjoy
in the East clung about her. "To live on a plane that lifts you up like
that--so that you can defy all criticism and all convention, and go
about the streets like a mark of exclamation at the selfishness of the
world--there must be something very consummate in it or you couldn't go
on. At least I couldn't."

"I suppose I do look odd to you." Her voice took a curious, soft,
uplifted note. "I wear three garments only--the garments of my sisters
who plant the young shoots in the rice-fields, and carry bricks for the
building of rich men's houses, and gather the dung of the roadways to
burn for fuel. If the Army is to conquer India it must march bare-footed
and bare-headed all the way. All the way," Laura repeated, with a
tremor of musical sadness. Her eyes were fixed in appeal upon the other
woman's. "And if the sun beats down upon my uncovered head, I think, 'It
struck more fiercely upon Calvary'; and if the way is sharp to my unshod
feet, I say, 'At least I have no cross to bear.'" The last words seemed
almost a chant, and her voice glided from them into singing--

"The blessed Sav