"I beg your pardon," he said at last, with a little laugh, as he recognized the rudeness of the proceeding; "I am struck dumb, I think. In all my previous extended experience no more astonishing query has ever been put to me. I don't know how to take it."

"Won't you simply answer it?"

"Why, it is too astonishing to me that the thing requires an answer! I don't believe I even know what it is to be the sort of character to which you refer."

"Then, am I to understand that you don't know but you may be one?"

The young man laughed again, a slightly embarrassed laugh, and gave his visitor a swift, penetrating glance, as if he would like to know whether she was playing a part; then finding that she waited, he said:

"Oh, not at all! In fact, I may say I am very certain that I don't belong to the class in question, even in name."

"May I ask you why?"

"Why!" He repeated the word. There was something very bewildering and embarrassing about these short, direct, simply-put questions. He had never heard them before. "Really, that is harder to answer than the first. What is it to be a Christian, Miss Benedict?"

"It is to love the Lord Jesus Christ with a love that places his honor and his cause and his commands first, and all else secondary."

"Who does it?"

"He knows. Perhaps there are many. Why are not you one?"

He dropped his eyes now, but answered lightly:

"Hard to tell. I have never given the matter sufficiently serious thought to be able to witness in the case."

"But is that reply worthy of a reasoning being? Won't you be frank about the matter, Mr. Ansted? I don't mean to preach, and I did not intend to be offensively personal. I was thinking this afternoon how strange it was that so many well-educated, reasoning young men left this subject outside, and were apparently indifferent to it, though they professed to believe in the story of the Bible; and I wondered why it was: what process of reasoning brought them to such a position. Will you tell me about it? How do young men, who are intelligent, who accept the Bible as a standard of morals by which the world ought to be governed, who respect the church and think it ought to be supported, reason about their individual positions as outsiders? They do not stand outside of political questions where they have a settled opinion; why do they in this?"

"I don't know," he answered at last. "The majority of them, perhaps, never give it a thought; with others the claims which the church makes are too squarely in contact with pre-arranged plans of life; and none of them more than half believe in religion as exhibited in the every-day lives about them."

"Have you given me your reason for being outside, Mr. Ansted?"

"Why, yes, I suppose so; that is, so far as I can be said to have a reason. I don't reason about these matters."

"Will you tell me which one of the three reasons you gave is yours?"

"Were you educated for the bar, Miss Benedict? Since you press me, I must say that a mixture of all three might be found revolving about my inner consciousness. I rarely trouble myself with the subject. That is foolish. I suppose; but it is really no more foolish than I am about many things. Then so far as I may be said to have plans, what little I know of the Bible is dreadfully opposed to the most of them, and, well, I don't more than one third believe in any of the professions which are being lived about me."

"But you believe in the Bible?"

"Oh, I believe it is a fine old book, which has some grand reading in it, and some that is very dull, and I know as little about it as the majority of men and women."

"Oh, then let me put the question a little differently: Do you believe in Jesus Christ?"

"Believe in him!"

"Yes, as one who once lived in person on this earth, and died on a cross, and went back to heaven, and is to come again at some future time?"

"Oh, yes; I have no particular reason for doubting prophecy or history on those points. I'm rather inclined to think the whole story is true."

"Do you think his character worthy of admiration?"

"Oh, yes, of course; it is a remarkable character. Even infidels concede that, you know; and I am no infidel. Bob Ingersoll and his follies have no charm for me. I have had that disease, Miss Benedict; like the measles and whooping-cough, it belongs to a certain period of life, you know, and I am past that. I had it in a very mild form, however, and it left no trace. The fellow's logic has nothing to stand on."

She ignored the entire sentence, save the first two words. She had not the slightest desire to talk about Bob Ingersoll, or to let this gay young man explain some of Bob's weak mistakes, and laugh with her over his want of historic knowledge. She went straight to the centre of the subject:

"Then, Mr Ansted, won't you join his army, and come over and help us?"

Nothing had ever struck the brilliant young man as being more embarrassing than this simple question, with a pair of earnest eyes waiting for his answer. It would not do to be merrily stupid and pretend to misunderstand her question, as he at first meditated, and ask her whether she really wanted him to join Ingersoll's army. Her grave eyes were fixed on his face too searchingly for that. There was nothing for it but to flit behind one of his flimsy reasons:

"Really, Miss Benedict, there are already enough recruits of the sort that I should make. When I find a Christian man whom I can admire with all my heart—instead of seeing things in him every day that even I, with my limited knowledge, know to be contrary to his orders—I may perhaps give the matter consideration, but, in my opinion, the army is too large now."

"But you told me you admired Jesus Christ. I do not ask you to be like any other person—to act in any sense like any other person whom you ever saw or of whom you ever heard. Will you copy him, Mr. Ansted?"

There was no help for it; there must be a direct answer; she was waiting.

"I do not suppose I will." This was his reply, but the air of gayety with which he had been speaking was gone. You might almost have imagined that he was ashamed of the words.

"Won't you please tell me why?"

Was there ever a man under such a direct fire of personal questions hard to answer? Banter would not do. There was something in the face and voice of the questioner which made him feel that it would be a personal insult to reply other than seriously.

"There are insurmountable difficulties in the way," he said at last, speaking in a low, grave tone.

"Difficulties too hard for God to surmount? You can not mean that?"

But he did not explain what he meant, and at that moment he received a peremptory summons from his mother to the parlor. He arose at once, glad, apparently, of the interruption, but did not attempt to return to the free and easy tone with which he had carried on part of the conversation, but bade her a grave and respectful good-night.

Left alone, poor Claire could only sigh in a disappointed way; as usual, she had not said the words she meant to say, and she could but feel that she had accomplished nothing. It had been her father's motto to spend no time alone with a human being without learning whether he belonged to the army; and if not, making an effort to secure his enlistment. Claire, looking on, had known more than one young man, and middle-aged man, and not a few children, who had reported in after days that a word from her father had been their starting-point. Sadly, she mourned, oftentimes, because she had not her father's tact and judgment. It had seemed to her that this young man, with his handsome face and his handsome fortune, ought to be won for Christ. Why did not his mother win him, or his sister? Why did not she? She could but try; so she tried, and apparently had failed; and she was still so young a worker that she sighed, and felt discouraged, instead of being willing to drop the seed, and leave the results with God. She belonged to that great company of seed-sowers who are very anxious to see the mysterious processes that go on underground, with which they have nothing whatever to do.

The next day Claire went back to the Academy. Her twisted ankle was still to be petted and nursed, and the piano had to move from the music-room to a vacant one next to Claire's own, and the chapel and dining-room did without her for a while, but the work of the day was resumed, and went steadily forward.

It was not without earnest protest that she left the home which had opened so royally to receive her; and it is safe to say that every member of the family missed her, none more than Alice, who had found a relief in her conversations from the ennui and unrest which possessed her. Louis, too, had added his entreaties that the burdens of life at the Academy should not be assumed so soon, and evidently missed something from the home after her departure. It was when he was helping her to the sleigh that he said:

"You did not answer my question about the old church and your interest in it; may I call some evening, and get my answer?"

"We shall be glad to see you at the Academy," she had replied, cordially, "but I can answer your question now. It is because it is the church of Christ, and it is my duty to do for it in every way all that I can."

"But," he said, puzzled, "how is it that the church fathers, and, for that matter, the church mothers, have let it get into such a wretched state of repair? Why haven't they a duty concerning it, rather than a stranger in their midst?"

"I did not say that they had not; but they don't have to report to me; the Head of the Church will see to that."

Then Dennis, the Academy man-of-all-work, had taken the reins, while Louis was in the act of tucking the robes more carefully about her, and driven rapidly away.

"It is queer how things work," Ruth Jennings said, as a party of the girls gathered around their teacher to report progress. "There are a dozen things that have had to lie idle, waiting for you. Why do you suppose we had to be interrupted in our plans, and almost stand still and do nothing, while you lay on a couch with a sprained ankle? I'm sure we were doing nice things and right things, and we needed you, and it could do no possible good to anybody for you to lie and suffer up there for a week. I do say it looks sometimes as if things just happened in this world, or else were managed by somebody who hated the world and every good plan that was made for it. Don't you really think that Satan has a good deal of control, Miss Benedict?"

But there were reasons why Miss Benedict thought it would be as well not to let her pupil wander off just then on a misty sea of questionings. As for herself, she had no doubt that the interruption was for some good end; it is true, she could not see the end, but she trusted it.

You are to remember that she had had her sharper lessons, beside which all this was the merest child's play. Those girls could not possibly know how that awful "why" had tortured her through days and nights until that memorable Sunday night when God gave her victory. What interruptions had come to her! Father and fortune, and home, and life-work, cut off in a moment; the whole current of her life changed; changed in ways that would not do even to hint to the girls; what was a sprained ankle and a few days of inaction compared with these! Yet their evident chafing over the loss of time opened her eyes to a new truth. It seemed such a trivial thing to her, that she could scarce restrain her lips from a smile over their folly in dwelling on it, until suddenly there dashed over her the thought:

"What if, in the light of Heaven, my interruptions all seem as small as this?"

The interrupted work was now taken up with renewed energy, and indeed blossomed at once into new varieties.

"What we must do next is to give a concert."

This was the spark that the music-teacher threw into the midst of the group of girls who occupied various attitudes about her chair. It was evening, and they were gathered in her room for a chat as to ways and means. Several days had passed, and the foot was so far recovered that its owner promised it a walk down the church aisle on the following Sabbath, provided Dennis could arrange to have it taken to the door. It still, however, occupied a place of honor among the cushions, and Claire sat back in the depths of a great comfortable rocker that had been brought from the parlor for her use.

"A concert!" repeated Ruth, great dismay in her voice, "us?"

"Yes, us."

"Who would come?" This from Nettie.

"Everybody will come after we are ready, if we have managed our part of the work well, and put our tickets low enough, and exerted ourselves to sell them. Oh, I don't mean play! I mean work! We would make ready for a first-class entertainment. Let me see, are you not all my music pupils? Yes, every one of you, either vocal or piano pupils. What is more natural than to suppose that 'Miss Claire Benedict, assisted by her able and efficient class of pupils,' can 'give an entertainment in the audience-room of the church,' etc? Isn't that the way the advertisements head?"

"For the benefit of the church?"

But to this suggestion Miss Benedict promptly shook her head:

"No, for the benefit of ourselves."