erch dozed in her chair. Effie was always happy. Nothing of that
wanting something look was ever to be seen in Effie's shining eyes. She
had the secret of life. Watching her face while they talked, he came to
believe that the secret, the thing missing in half the faces one saw,
was love. But--the old difficulty--many had love; himself and Nona; and
yet were troubled.

One evening he asked her a most extraordinary question, shot out of him
without intending it, discharged out of his questing thoughts as by a
hidden spring suddenly touched by groping fingers.

"Effie, do you love God?"

Her surprise seemed to him to be more at the thing he had asked than at
its amazing unexpectedness and amazing irrelevancy. "Why, of course I
do, Mr. Sabre."

"Why do you?"

She was utterly at a loss. "Well, of course I do."

He said rather sharply, "Yes, but _why_? Have you ever asked yourself
why? Respecting, fearing, trusting, that's understandable. But love,
_love_, you know what love is, don't you? What's love got to do with
God?"

She said in simple wonderment, as one asked what had the sun to do with
light, or whether water was wet, "Why, God _is_ love."

He stared at her.

VII

The second Christmas of the war came. The evening before the last day of
the Old Year was to have given Sabre a rare pleasure to which he had
been immensely looking forward. He was to have spent it with Mr. Fargus.
The old chess and acrostic evenings hardly ever happened now. Mr.
Fargus, most manifestly unfitted for the exposures of such a life, had
become a special constable. He did night duty in the Garden Home. He
chose night duty, he told Sabre, because he had no work to do by day and
could therefore then take his rest. Younger men who were in offices and
shops hadn't the like advantage. It was only fair he should help in the
hours help was most wanted. Sabre said it would kill him in time, but
Mrs. Fargus and the three Miss Farguses still at home replied, when
Sabre ventured this opinion to them, that Papa was much stronger than
any one imagined, also that they agreed with Papa that one ought to do
in the war, not what one wanted to do, but what was most required to be
done; finally that, being at home by day, Papa could help, and liked
helping, in the many duties about the house now interfered with by the
enlistment of the entire battalion of female Farguses in work for the
war. One detachment of female Farguses had leapt into blue or kh