“ In the sight of our fellow men the condemnation is upon you; but how blind and ignorant is the judgment of men! Yet this I will say: I never meant to harm you, Margaret. I had no slightest thought of what it meant to you and your mother. I was ignorant, and oh, I, too, was passionate and misguided! But now that I have found you again, now that I have you here in my home while you need me and I need you--and I do need you, Margaret--stay with me, stay here with me."
"Stay with you? Stay here with you? Little you know what it is you ask, Mrs. Thorpe--little you know! ”

“ I have longed for the touch, the presence, the realization of the God that lives as I have never longed for earthly possessions. I have prayed in my heart that I might be deprived of every earthly joy, every pleasure, every comfort, that I might be an outcast on the face of the earth, that I might know the anguish in the Garden, that I might feel the nails in my hands, if by this means I might have in my life and soul a realization of the Infinite, might feel and know the Divine presence. ”

“ The face was the dark, passion-stamped face of Margaret McGowan.
The doctor crossed the room and laid his burden on the couch as Mrs. Thorpe directed him. Then he straightened himself and looked into Mrs. Thorpe's face.
Never in her life had she seen a face so haggard, so deadly white and set. The time may come to a human heart when sympathy is as keenly craved as is food and drink to a man stranded in the desert. For one long minute the doctor held Mrs. Thorpe's eyes with his, and she read in their awful depths the tragedy of his life. ”

“ She did not disturb him, but went over and stood by the window and watched the sweet-brier as it tapped gently now against the window-pane.
Mr. Mayhew lowered his paper and looked at her, and his mind became reminiscent. He was impressed anew with Geraldine's likeness to her father; and this man seemed to come out of the shadowy past and confront him. Noble he had been, high-minded, conscientious and--poor. A musician, his artist's soul pure as the divine strains of his melodies, he seemed like one whom chance had placed in a wrong world, or a wrong age. ”

“ Thorpe felt herself without rudder or sail, her bark at the mercy of a stormy sea. Her mind was chaotic:
"The Lord Jesus Christ then was sitting comfortably, contentedly upon His throne in the skies! What wonder that His people are straying in many forbidden paths? What wonder that they are wandering, scattered and lost? Are they not as sheep without a shepherd? If He is the Savior of men, why is He not among His people--oh, his people who so sorely need Him?" ”

“ Yet saving power of the Infinite, though we have lost our Eden, even as our first parents lost theirs, the Kingdom of Heaven is neither visionary nor transitory, but forever remains.
Margaret's Eden was gone; she had stepped out of her purity into darkness and evil, and the Angel with the flaming sword stood forbidding on one hand, and on the other the Beasts that had sought to destroy her. But into her life had come the understanding that there is but one real power--the Power of Eternal Good.
"What is it you have in mind to do, Margaret?" asked Mrs. Thorpe. ”

“ He sprang to his feet and walked the length of the porch and back. "Eldrige," he said, "I had thought never to impose on your friendship by bringing up the past; but I feel to-night as though I may break my good resolutions."
"Do not be afraid of imposing on my friendship, Max; speak of the past as freely as you like. You know me--we know each other."
"You know my temperament, Eldrige; I have always been a devil of a fellow when aroused; and the attitude of those good people over there beyond the hill arouses me a bit. ”

“ The first love of the man's heart was given to his church; not even the fair and gracious woman whom he had wooed and wed came before this; and into its treasury he poured the first vigor and strength of his earnest manhood. There had been a time when he had inclined toward celibacy for the ministry. Although he had never doubted the aid and comfort the right sort of a wife could be to a pastor, there was in his heart a lurking horror of being yoked to a woman who was not in very truth, his second self, flesh of his flesh, soul of his soul, mind of his mind. ”

“ Max Morrison was a man of the world. Men knew him as an all around good fellow; women knew him as a bright and shining light about which many a pretty moth had singed its gilded wings, been scorched, maimed, wounded. But his popularity increased rather than diminished because of this, and Edgerly's best society welcomed him warmly.
But the best society and all that it offers, as well as the amusements that cannot bear the light of day, pall on a man in time and that which is fine within him, silent, yet alive, cries for expression. ”

“ From the bookshelves of the world were selected volumes written by a master hand, books that had stood the test of time and lived through the years. And the fact stood out with distinctness that the souls of the men who wrote them were not shackled, they were not slaves to another's will, nor bound by another's power, but that the minds that conceived them stood in absolute freedom before God. He was made to feel the throb and pulse of freedom, unbound and unfettered, that surged through the life of the artists that have painted the world's famous pictures and fashioned its works of art. ”

“ She saw man--upright, holy, divine--yet dominated by his false beliefs and his conceptions of evil, believing himself the sinful, unclean thing that his distorted vision pictures him to be; ignorant, misguided, toiling in pain and sorrow. Christ, ah, Christ! Who would not be a Christ, a Savior of men; who would not sacrifice this stage of life, yea, die a thousand deaths, if by pain and sacrifice he might show this bruised and broken people the perfection of life, and the harmony of the condition in which Infinite love has placed them? ”

“ Then, more eagerly: "Oh, Maurice, can you not see that it has restored my health, taken away my infirmities, blessed my life and made me whole?" The flood-gates were opened and the fullness of her soul poured forth. "It is the Truth that has made me free; there is no real power in the world save God's power. There is a better conception of life than that which admits sickness and disease to be real and powerful. Have not we to-day the same Savior who walked the Galilean shore healing all forms of sin and sickness? God is the same yesterday, to-day and forever. ”

“ With a flood of tears the girl buried her face in her mother's lap. Poor Margaret, she had not yet learned to look with unthinking, unheeding vision on the wrongs of humanity, her own included. Little more than a child, she had looked at life with a child's vision, and wrong, to her, had been wrong, and right was right. The distribution of property that gives one person more than enough and another less than sufficient, can never seem just to a mind unbiased by worldly wisdom. ”

“ There are those who are as keenly sensitive to the mental atmosphere about them. Mrs. Thorpe felt strongly that unless her faith in the integrity of her purpose sustained her, her undertaking must fail before it had drawn the first full breath of life. She had stated her purpose and asked the favor and she felt little inclined to beg or plead for its fulfillment. Yet a battle was fought, keen and sharp. There was no flashing of swords nor pomp nor parade, neither were there words nor argument. It was the play of mind upon mind; penetrating, forceful. It was thought pitted against thought ”

“ She heard her answer to Pauline:
"Yes, I try to trust Him." But the second personality, forceful, insistent--what wildness, what frenzy was this?
"There is no God! There is no power in Heaven above, nor in Hell below, nor on this earth, that has a right to create a man and then by slow degrees to torture him to death! To rot the flesh from living bones, to crush and pollute and deform! It is not true! If this is God--cursed be God! If this is the Christ--"
With a strong effort, a quick, nervous movement, she recovered herself. ”

“ And always when his mind had gone back over the past he had seen only the strewn and broken wreckage of his hopes, and the future was black with a dumb agony that he had no heart to face.
But one of the facts of this creation of ours and of the eternal verities that govern it is that sincerity never seeks in vain; when the sincerity of the soul asks, divine Love does not, could not, fail to respond. We must understand that there are many phases of mortal thought that parade under the mantle of sincerity which have little or no relation to that which is truly sincere. ”

“ The melody was now pleading and plaintive, like a voice filled with passionate longing, and again solemn and grand as the longing glided into fulfillment, and at last triumphant, victorious--
"All is well with the world."
Geraldine Vane, a little lower than the angels, her blue eyes like stars and her yellow hair like a halo of light, put her own heart-pulse into the music. In the anthem that followed, Max Morrison's strong, clear voice rang out the joyful message:
"Peace on earth, good-will, good-will to men." ”

“ I have come to the conclusion that what we call the Christian world has in its social code and accepted standards of respectability a law of its own, the spirit of which never sprang from inspiration; a law that binds and holds absolutely, as the letter of the old Jewish law held the priests and scribes who cried 'Crucify, crucify the Truth unless it comes in the style and manner that we have marked out for its coming.' The simple, undressed truth is ignored, put aside and kept in the background; the so-called church of Christ keeps it there. ”

“ Some day, that bright, blessed day that even now is dawning, men will not keep and hoard that for which they have no need, and for the lack of which a fellow man perishes and dies. When this day dawns no man will desire more of this world's goods than he can use and enjoy. Men will not seat themselves at a feast and stuff and feed until their bodies distend and their eyes start from their sockets while the wail of hungry children echoes in the land.
The monster, cruel, relentless, immovable, that Mrs. Thorpe found everywhere on the Flat was Poverty. ”

“ A world of growing things, abundant, forceful, alive, are springing from the brown, fructuous earth; spring is pregnant, alive with a power beyond human conception. Boundless, limitless, infinite Power!
Now questions that at first seemed to come to her timid, elusive, quivered before Mrs. Thorpe's mental vision and insinuated themselves into her consciousness. Was this material evidence before her eyes the substance and reality of that which she saw, or was there something hidden from her mortal vision, something in this scene before her which her senses could not recognize? ”

“ Thorpe noticed the droop of her husband's shoulders, the worn look on his face, and her heart cried out against whatever it might be that gave him pain.
The Easter sun sank behind the tree-tops and its last rays lay warm and tender over the church and parsonage and over the meanest hovel on the Flat. Great Illuminator which seeks not the place of its shining and respects not one person above another--typical of the love of God. ”

“ What wonder that the children of His creation have from the beginning gone astray? What wonder that envy and hatred, strife, bitterness and despair live and flourish? Can man rise above his conception of his Creator? Can he consistently worship a God who had planned and caused to be done a thing from which the compassionate human heart must shrink and human hand must stay? Is not the whole story of the Creation, the Fall, the Sacrifice, the Redemption, as we have heard it in all its harrowing details, absurd, deplorable, culpable? ”

“ And there was something in Margaret, this passionate girl with her turbulent, troubled past, that appealed to the favored child of chastity and gave her a broader, more sympathetic outlook; gave her that peculiar knowledge the lack of which Mrs. Mayhew had once deplored. The two girls were of about the same age; they had grown to womanhood in the same town, but circumstances had forced their paths far apart. Now the threads of their lives, so different in form and color, were weaving together the pattern of a unique friendship. ”

“ There is no time nor place nor circumstance in life stronger than the central force within us.
Since her husband's departure Mrs. Thorpe's time had been taken up with work that pressed upon her; many cares and real labor claimed her time and strength. But now all was done, her house was in order and she was alone, sitting with empty hands--alone--beside her silent hearth. The wind blustered noisily outside, foretelling the ravages of winter, and sleet and rain came spasmodically against her window-panes. ”

“ One in whom the great, throbbing heart of the universe, the secret of all things, is embodied. Where is this great Master-Spirit, drawing all men to Him, healing their infirmities and cleansing them from sin? Have you seen Him in the hearts of those who attend our church, living in comfort and luxury--while over on the Flat--Mrs. Mayhew--over on the Flat--can you bear to think of it? Have you seen aught of His healing power? How many can you count among the members of our church who are suffering from some infirmity? How many are every whit whole? ”

“ Thorpe's preconceived knowledge vanished and melted away. Every structure that she had built had been founded on shifting, undulating sand, upon her belief of life in matter. The ideas and conceits of her childhood, the ardor and energy of her young womanhood, and all the strain of recent years all passed before her, and all were empty, vain, human and finite. She saw mortals bowed and broken, guided by finite wisdom and helped by finite power, trying to do God's work; struggling and agonizing, trying to aid Infinite strength, and to supplement Infinite wisdom. ”

“ A distorted vision pictured itself impishly before her. Being a woman, she should cleave virtuously to the good, but be willing to fall on her knees at the marriage altar and accept the bad! She felt that the magnitude of the question was crushing her, and that its complexity would be her undoing. The longer she hesitated for the words in which to express her meaning, the more helplessly lost she became, and Geraldine was waiting for the answer to a direct question.
"To allow you to believe that Max is virtuous as you understand virtue would not be justice to you, Geraldine," she said. ”

“ The two men walked leisurely up to the house; Geraldine, in a simple white gown that caused her face with the golden hair above it to appear like the petals of some rare-tinted flower, stood against the dark outline of vines that screened the porch. All that her girlhood promised had blossomed into womanhood; maternity had developed all that was best and noblest in her.
From a nearby cottage a ripple of childish laughter floated out on the evening air. Geraldine turned to her companions.
"Does earth contain sweeter music than the laugh of a child?" ”

“ Thorpe replied, "your hospitality is sweet to me."
After the evening meal was over they sat out on the broad cottage porch and discussed various aspects of their work. From adjoining cottages could be heard the chatter and laughter of children's voices. The air was sweet with the scent of flowers; the sun was nearing the horizon and its radiance lay over the Flat, no longer the unlovely Flat, but a collection of comfortable homes whose inmates, sure of employment and, more than this, sure of justice and equity, had in a measure fallen into harmony with the forces that make for righteousness. ”

“ Something valued, something prized and loved was gone from life. Whatever the years might hold hereafter, this dear one was gone; his God had taken him. But there were no doubts or sacrilegious questionings in Mr. Thorpe's mind. His God was his sovereign, supreme of will, infallible in justice. Nor did the thought ever penetrate the well-kept fabric of his belief that there could be aught of ignorance in his conception of God; or that the Infinite in its length and breadth and depths was not wholly within the compass of his vision. ”