The chill winds of another autumn swirled through the masonry-lined caÑons of the metropolis and sighed among the stark trees of its deserted parks. They caught up the tinted leaves that dropped from quivering branches and tossed them high, as Fate wantons with human hopes before she blows her icy breath upon them. They shrieked among the naked spars of the Cossack, drifting with her restless master far out upon the white-capped waves. They moaned in low-toned agony among the marble pillars of the Crowles mausoleum, where lay in pitying sleep the misguided woman whose gods of gold and tinsel had betrayed her.

On the outskirts of the Bronx, in a newly opened suburb, a slender girl, with books and papers under her arm, walked slowly against the sharp wind, holding her hat with her free hand, and talking rapidly to a young man who accompanied her. Toward them came an old negro, leaning upon a cane. As he stepped humbly aside to make room, the girl looked up. Then, without stopping, she slipped a few coins into his coat pocket as she passed.

The negro stood in dumb amazement. He was poor––his clothes were thin and worn––but he was not a beggar––he had asked nothing. The girl turned and threw back a smile to him. Then of a sudden there came into the old man’s wrinkled, care-lined face such a look, such a comprehension of that love which knows neither Jew nor Gentile, Greek nor Barbarian, as would have caused even the Rabbis, at the cost of defilement, to pause and seek its heavenly meaning.

A few blocks farther on the strong wind sternly disputed the girl’s right to proceed, and she turned with a merry laugh to her companion. But as she stood, the wind fell, leaving a heap of dead leaves about her feet. Glancing down, something caught her eye. She stooped and took up a two-dollar bill.

Her companion threw her a wondering look; but the girl 4 made no comment. In silence they went on, until a few minutes more of brisk walking brought them to a newly built, stucco-coated bungalow. Running rapidly up the steps, the girl threw wide the door and called, “Mother dear!”

The Beaubien rose from her sewing to receive the hearty embrace. “Well, dearie?” she said, devouring the sparkling creature with eager eyes. “What luck?”

“We’re registered! Lewis begins his law course at once, and I may take what I wish. And Mr. Hitt’s coming to call to-night and bring a friend, a Mr. Haynerd, an editor. What’s Jude got for supper? My! I’m starved.”

The Beaubien drew the girl to her and kissed her again and again. Then she glanced over her shoulder at the man with a bantering twinkle in her eyes and said, “Don’t you wish you could do that? But you can’t.”

“Yes he can, too, mother,” asserted the girl.

Father Waite sighed. “I’m afraid it wouldn’t look well,” he said. “And, besides, I don’t dare lose my heart to her.”

With a final squeeze the girl tore herself from the Beaubien’s reluctant arms and hurried to the little kitchen. “What is it to-night, Jude?” she demanded, catching the domestic in a vigorous embrace.

“Hist!” said Jude, holding up a finger. “It’s a secret. I’m afraid you’d tell him.”

“Not a word––I promise.”

“Well, then, liver and bacon, with floating island,” she whispered, very mysteriously.

“Oh, goody!” cried Carmen. “He just loves them both!”

Returning to the little parlor, Carmen encountered the fixed gaze of both the Beaubien and Father Waite. “Well?” she demanded, stopping and looking from one to the other.

“What about that two dollars?” said the Beaubien, in a tone of mock severity.

“Oh,” laughed the girl, running to the woman and seating herself in the waiting lap, “he told, didn’t he? Can’t I ever trust you with a secret?” in a tone of rebuke, turning to the man.

“Surely,” he replied, laughing; “and I should not have divulged this had I not seen in the incident something more than mere chance––something meant for us all.”

Then he became serious. “I––I think I have seen the working of a stupendous mental law––am I not right?” addressing the girl. “You saw a need, and met it, unsolicited. You found your own in another’s good.”

The girl smiled at the Beaubien without replying. “What about it, dearie?” the latter asked tenderly.

“She need not answer,” said Father Waite, “for we know. She but cast her bread upon the unfathomable ocean of love, and it returned to her, wondrously enriched.”

“If you are going to talk about me, I shall not stay,” declared Carmen, rising. “I’m going out to help Jude.” And she departed for the kitchen, but not without leaving a smile for each of them as she went. And they understood.

The Beaubien and Father Waite remained some moments in silence. Then the woman spoke. “I am learning,” she said. “She is the light that is guiding me. This little incident which you have just related is but a manifestation of the law of love by which she lives. She gave, unasked, and with no desire to be seen and advertised. It returned to her ten-fold. It is always so with her. There was no chance, no miracle, no luck about it. She herself did nothing. It was––it was––only the working of her beloved Christ-principle. Oh, Lewis! if we only knew––”

“We shall know, Madam!” declared the man vehemently. “Her secret is but the secret of Jesus himself, which was open to a world too dull to comprehend. Carmen shall teach us. And,” his eyes brightening, “to that end I have been formulating a great plan. That’s why I’ve asked Hitt to come here to-night. I have a scheme to propose. Remember, my dear friend, we are true searchers; and ‘all things work together for good to them that love God.’ Our love of truth and real good is so great that, like the consuming desire of the Jewish nation, it is bound to bring the Christ!”

For three months the Beaubien and Carmen had dwelt together in this lowly environment; and here they had found peace, the first that the tired woman had known since childhood. The sudden culmination of those mental forces which had ejected Carmen from society, crushed Ketchim and a score of others, and brought the deluded Mrs. Hawley-Crowles to a bitter end, had left the Beaubien with dulled sensibilities. Even Ames himself had been shocked into momentary abandonment of his relentless pursuit of humanity by the unanticipated dÉnoÛement. But when he had sufficiently digested the newspaper accounts wherein were set forth in unsparing detail the base rumors of the girl’s parentage and of her removal from a brothel before her sudden elevation to social heights, he rose in terrible wrath and prepared to hunt down to the death the perpetrators of the foul calumny. Whence had come this tale, which even the girl could not refute? From Lafelle? He had sailed for Europe––though but a day before. Ketchim? The man was cringing like a craven murderer in his 6 cell, for none dared give him bail. Reed? Harris? Was it revenge for his own sharp move in regard to La Libertad? He would have given all he possessed to lay his heavy hands upon the guilty ones! The editors of the great newspapers, perhaps? Ames raged like a wounded lion in the office of every editor in the city. But they were perfectly safe, for the girl, although she told a straightforward story, could not say positively that the published statements concerning her were false. Yet, though few knew it, there were two city editors and several reporters who, in the days immediately following, found it convenient to resign their positions and leave the city before the awful wrath of the powerful man.

Then Ames turned upon his wife. And, after weeks of terror, that browbeaten woman, her hair whitening under the terrible persecution of her relentless master, fled secretly, with her terrified daughter, to England, whither the stupified Duke of Altern and his scandalized mother had betaken themselves immediately following the exposÉ. Thereupon Ames’s lawyer drew up a bill of divorce, alleging desertion, and laid it before the judge who fed from his master’s hand.

Meantime, the devouring wrath of Ames swept like a prairie fire over the dry, withering stalks of the smart set. He vowed he would take Carmen and flaunt her in the faces of the miserable character-assassins who had sought her ruin! He swore he would support her with his untold millions and force society to acknowledge her its queen! He had it in his power to wreck the husband of every arrogant, supercilious dame in the entire clique! He commenced at once with the unfortunate Gannette. The latter, already tottering, soon fell before the subtle machinations of Hodson and his able cohorts. Then, as a telling example to the rest, Ames pursued him to the doors of the Lunacy Commission, and rested not until that body had condemned his victim to a living death in a state asylum. Kane, Fitch, and Weston fled to cover, and concentrated their guns upon their common enemy. The Beaubien alone stood out against him for three months. Her existence was death in life; but from the hour that she first read the newspaper intelligence regarding Carmen and the unfortunate Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, she hid the girl so completely that Ames was effectually balked in his attempts at drastic vindication in her behalf.

But this served only to intensify his anger, and he thereupon turned its full force upon the lone woman. Driven to desperation, she stood at length at bay and hurled at him her remaining weapon. Again the social set was rent, and this time by the report that the black cloud of bigamy hung over Ames. It was 7 a fat season for the newspapers, and they made the most of it. As a result, several of them found themselves with libel suits on their hands. The Beaubien herself was confronted with a suit for defamation of character, and was obliged to testify before the judge whom Ames owned outright that she had but the latter’s word for the charge, and that, years since, in a moment of maudlin sentimentalism, he had confessed to her that, as far as he knew, the wife of his youth was still living. The suit went against her. Ames then took his heavy toll, and retired within himself to sulk and plan future assaults and reprisals.

The Beaubien, crushed, broken, sick at heart, gathered up the scant remains of her once large fortune, disposed of her effects, and withdrew to the outskirts of the city. She would have left the country, but for the fact that the tangled state of her finances necessitated her constant presence in New York while her lawyers strove to bring order out of chaos and placate her raging persecutor. To flee meant complete abandonment of her every financial resource to Ames. And so, with the assistance of Father Waite and Elizabeth Wall, who placed themselves at once under her command, she took a little house, far from the scenes of her troubles, and quietly removed thither with Carmen.

One day shortly thereafter a woman knocked timidly at her door. Carmen saw the caller and fled into her arms. “It’s Jude!” she cried joyously.

The woman had come to return the string of pearls which the girl had thrust into her hands on the night of the Charity Ball. Nobody knew she had them. She had not been able to bring herself to sell them. She had wanted––oh, she knew not what, excepting that she wanted to see again the girl whose image had haunted her since that eventful night when the strange child had wandered into her abandoned life. Yes, she would have given her testimony as to Carmen; but who would have believed her, a prostitute? And––but the radiant girl gathered her in her arms and would not let her go without a promise to return.

And return she did, many times. And each time there was a change in her. The Beaubien always forced upon her a little money and a promise to come back. It developed that Jude was cooking in a cheap down-town restaurant. “Why not for us, mother, if she will?” asked Carmen one day. And, though the sin-stained woman demurred and protested her unworthiness, yet the love that knew no evil drew her irresistibly, and she yielded at length, with her heart bursting.

Then, in her great joy, Carmen’s glad cry echoed through the little house: “Oh, mother dear, we’re free, we’re free!”

But the Beaubien was not free. Night after night her sleepless pillow was wet with bitter tears of remorse, when the accusing angel stood before her and relentlessly revealed each act of shameful meanness, of cruel selfishness, of sordid immorality in her wasted life. And, lastly, the weight of her awful guilt in bringing about the destruction of Mrs. Hawley-Crowles lay upon her soul like a mountain. Oh, if she had only foreseen even a little of it! Oh, that Carmen had come to her before––or not at all! And yet she could not wish that she had never known the girl. Far from it! The day of judgment was bound to come. She saw that now. And, but for the comforting presence of that sweet child, she had long since become a raving maniac. It was Carmen who, in those first long nights of gnawing, corroding remorse, wound her soft arms about the Beaubien’s neck, as she lay tossing in mental agony on her bed, and whispered the assurances of that infinite Love which said, “Behold, I make all things new!” It was Carmen who whispered to her of the everlasting arms beneath, and of the mercy reflected by him who, though on the cross, forgave mankind because of their pitiable ignorance. It is ignorance, always ignorance of what constitutes real good, that makes men seek it through wrong channels. The Beaubien had sought good––all the world does––but she had never known that God alone is good, and that men cannot find it until they reflect Him. And so she had “missed the mark.” Oh, sinful, mesmerized world, ye shall find Me––the true good––only when ye seek Me with all your heart! And yet, “I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.” Only a God who is love could voice such a promise! And Carmen knew; and she hourly poured her great understanding of love into the empty heart of the stricken Beaubien.

Then at last came days of quiet, and planning for the future. The Beaubien would live––yes, but not for herself. Nay, that life had gone out forever, nor would mention of it pass her lips again. The Colombian revolution––her mendacious connivances with Ames––her sinful, impenitent life of gilded vice––aye, the door was now closed against that, absolutely and forever more. She had passed through the throes of a new birth; she had risen again from the bed of anguish; but she rose stripped of her worldly strength. Carmen was now the staff upon which she leaned.

And Carmen––what had been her thought when foul calumny laid its sooty touch upon her? What had been the working of her mind when that world which she had sought to illumine with the light of her own purity had cast her out? 9

When the blow fell the portals of her mind closed at once against every accusing thought, against every insidious suggestion of defeat, of loss, of dishonor. The arrows of malice, as well as those of self-pity and condemnation, snapped and fell, one by one, as they hurtled vainly against the whole armor of God wherewith the girl stood clad. Self sank into service; and she gathered the bewildered, suffering Beaubien into her arms as if she had been a child. She would have gone to Ames, too, had she been permitted––not to plead for mercy, but to offer the tender consolation and support which, despite the havoc he was committing, she knew he needed even more than the Beaubien herself.

“Paul had been a murderer,” she often said, as she sat in the darkness alone with the suffering woman and held her trembling hand. “But he became the chief of apostles. Think of it! When the light came, he shut the door against the past. If he hadn’t, dearest, he never could have done what he did. And you, and Mr. Ames, will have to do the same.” And this the Beaubien could do, and did, after months of soul-racking struggle. But Ames sat in spiritual darkness, whipped by the foul brood of lust and revenge, knowing not that the mountainous wrath which he hourly heaped higher would some day fall, and bury him fathoms deep.

Throughout the crisis Father Waite had stood by them stanchly. And likewise had Elizabeth Wall. “I’ve just longed for some reasonable excuse to become a social outcast,” the latter had said, as she was helping Carmen one day to pack her effects prior to removing from the Hawley-Crowles mansion. “I long for a hearthstone to which I can attach myself––”

“Then attach yourself to ours!” eagerly interrupted Carmen.

“I’ll do it!” declared Miss Wall. “For I know that now you are really going to live––and I want to live as you will. Moreover––” She paused and smiled queerly at the girl––“I am quite in love with your hero, Father Waite, you know.”

Harris, too, made a brief call before departing again for Denver. “I’ve got to hustle for a living now,” he explained, “and it’s me for the mountains once more! New York is no place for such a tender lamb as I. Oh, I’ve been well trimmed––but I know enough now to keep away from this burg!”

While he was yet speaking there came a loud ring at the front door of the little bungalow, followed immediately by the entrance of the manager of a down-town vaudeville house. He plunged at once into his errand. He would offer Carmen one hundred dollars a week, and a contract for six months, to appear twice daily in his theater. “She’ll make a roar!” he asserted. “Heavens, Madam! but she did put it over the society 10 ginks.” And the Beaubien, shivering at the awful proposal, was glad Harris was there to lead the zealous theatrical man firmly to the door.

Lastly, came one Amos A. Hitt, gratuitously, to introduce himself as one who knew Cartagena and was likely to return there in the not distant future, where he would be glad to do what he might to remove the stain which had been laid upon the name of the fair girl. The genuineness of the man stood out so prominently that the Beaubien took him at once into her house, where he was made acquainted with Carmen.

“Oh,” cried the girl, “Cartagena! Why, I wonder––do you know Padre JosÈ de RincÓn?”

“A priest who once taught there in the University, many years ago? And who was sent up the river, to SimitÍ? Yes, well.”

Then Carmen fell upon his neck; and there in that moment was begun a friendship that grew daily stronger, and in time bore richest fruit. It soon became known that Hitt was giving a course of lectures that fall in the University, covering the results of his archaeological explorations; so Carmen and Father Waite went often to hear him. And the long breaths of University atmosphere which the girl inhaled stimulated a desire for more. Besides, Father Waite had some time before announced his determination to study there that winter, as long as his meager funds would permit.

“I shall take up law,” he had one day said. “It will open to me the door of the political arena, where there is such great need of real men, men who stand for human progress, patriotism, and morality. I shall seek office––not for itself, but for the good I can do, and the help I can be in a practical way to my fellow-men. I have a little money. I can work my way through.”

Carmen shared the inspiration; and so she, too, with the Beaubien’s permission, applied for admittance to the great halls of learning, and was accepted.

“And now,” began Father Waite that evening, when Hitt and his friend had come, and, to the glad surprise of Carmen, Elizabeth Wall had driven up in her car to take the girl for a ride, but had yielded to the urgent invitation to join the little conference, “my plan, in which I invite you to join, is, briefly, to study this girl!”

Carmen’s eyes opened wide, and her face portrayed blank amazement, as Father Waite stood pointing gravely to her. Nor were the others less astonished––all but the Beaubien. She nodded her head comprehendingly.

“Let me explain,” Father Waite continued. “We are assembled here to-night as representatives, now or formerly, of very diversified lines of human thought. I will begin with myself. I have stood as the embodiment of Christly claims, as the active agent of one of the mightiest of human institutions, the ancient Christian Church. For years I have studied its accepted authorities and its all-inclusive assumptions, which embrace heaven, earth, and hell. For years I sought with sincere consecration to apply its precepts to the dire needs of humanity. I have traced its origin in the dim twilight of the Christian era and its progress down through the centuries, through heavy vicissitudes to absolute supremacy, on down through schisms and subsequent decline, to the present hour, when the great system seems to be gathering its forces for a life and death stand in this, the New World. I have known and associated with its dignitaries and its humble priests. I know the policies and motives underlying its quiet movements. I found it incompatible with human progress. And so I withdrew from it my allegiance.”

Carmen’s thought, as she listened, was busy with another whose experience had not been dissimilar, but about whom the human coils had been too tightly wound to be so easily broken.

“Our scholarly friend, Mr. Hitt,” Father Waite went on, “represented the great protest against the abuses and corruption which permeated the system for which I stood. He, like myself, embodied the eternal warfare of the true believer against the heretic. Yet, without my churchly system, I was taught to believe, he and those who share his thought are damned. But, oh, strange anomaly! we both claimed the same divine Father, and accepted the Christly definition of Him as Love. We were two brothers of the same great family, yet calling each other anathema!”

He looked over at Hitt and smiled. “And to-day,” he continued, “we brothers are humbly meeting on the common ground of failure––failure to understand the Christ, and to meet the needs of our fellow-men with our elaborate systems of theology.”

“I heard another priest, years ago, make a similar confession,” said Hitt reflectively. “I would he were here to-night!”

“He is here, in spirit,” replied Father Waite; “for the same spirit of eager inquiry and humble desire for truth that animates us no doubt moved him. I have reason to think so,” he added, looking at Carmen. “For this girl’s spiritual development I believe to be very largely his work.”

Hitt glanced at Carmen inquiringly. He knew but little as yet of her past association with the priest JosÈ.

“You and I, Mr. Hitt, represented the greatest systems of so-called Christian belief,” pursued Father Waite. “Madam Beaubien, on the other hand, has represented the world that waits, as yet vainly, for redemption. We have not been able to afford it her. Yet––pardon my frankness in thus referring to you, Madam. It is only to benefit us all––that the means of redemption have been brought to her, we must now admit.”

All turned and looked at Carmen. She started to speak, but Father Waite raised a detaining hand. “Let me proceed,” he said. “Miss Wall represents the weariness of spirit and unrest abroad in the world to-day, the spirit that finds life not worth the while; and Mr. Haynerd voices the cynical disbelief, the agnosticism, of that great class who can not accept the childish tenets of our dogmatic systems of theology, yet who have nothing but the philosophy of stoicism or epicureanism to offer in substitute.”

Haynerd bowed and smiled. “You have me correctly classified,” he said. “I’m a Yankee, and from Missouri.”

“And now, having placed us,” said the Beaubien, “how will you classify Carmen?”

Father Waite looked at the girl reverently. “Hers is the leaven,” he replied gently, “which has leavened the whole lump.

“My good friends,” he went on earnestly, “like all priests and preachers, I have been but a helpless spectator of humanity’s troubles. I have longed and prayed to know how to do the works which Jesus is said to have done; yet, at the sick-bed or the couch of death, what could I do––I, to whom the apostolic virtue is supposed to have descended in the long line of succession? I could anoint with holy oil. I could make signs, and pray. I could give promises of remitted sins––though I knew I spoke not truth. I could comfort by voicing the insipid views of our orthodox heaven. And yet I know that what I gave was but mental nostrums, narcotics, to stupify until death might end the suffering. Is that serving Christ? Is that Christianity? Alas, no!”

“And if you were a good orthodox priest,” interposed Haynerd, “you would refuse burial to dissenters, and bar from your communion table all who were not of your faith, eh?”

“Yes,” sadly. “I would have to, were I consistent; for Catholicism is the only true faith, founded upon the revealed word of God, you know.” He smiled pathetically as he looked around at the little group.

“Now,” he continued, “you, Mr. Haynerd, are a man of the world. You are not in sympathy with the Church. You are an infidel, an unbeliever. And therefore are you ‘anathema,’ you know.” He laughed as he went on. “But you can not 13 deny that at times you think very seriously. And, I may go farther: you long, intensely, for something that the world does not offer. Now, what is it but truth that you are seeking?”

“I want to know,” answered Haynerd quickly. “I want to be shown. I am fond of exhibitions of sleight-of-hand and jugglery. But the priestly thaumaturgy that claims to transform a biscuit into the flesh of a man dead some two thousand years, and a bit of grape juice into his blood, irritates me inexpressibly! And so does the jugglery by which your Protestant fellows, Hitt, attempt to reconcile their opposite beliefs. Why, what difference can it possibly make to the Almighty whether we miserable little beings down here are baptised with water, milk, or kerosene, or whether we are immersed, sprinkled, or well soused? Good heavens! for nearly twenty centuries you have been wandering among the non-essentials. Isn’t it time to get down to business, and instead of burning at the stake every one who differs with you, try conscientiously to put into practice a few of the simple moral precepts, such as the Golden Rule, and loving one’s neighbor as one’s self?”

“There,” commented Father Waite, “you have a bit of the world’s opinion of the Church! Can we say that the censure is not just? Would not Christ himself to-day speak even more scathingly to those who advocate a system of belief that puts blinders on men’s minds, and then leads them into the pit of ignorance and superstition?”

“Ye have taken away the key of knowledge,” murmured Carmen; “ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered.”

“Just so!” exclaimed Haynerd, looking at the girl who stood as a living protest against all that hampers the expansion of the human mind; that quenches its note of joy, and dulls its enlarging and ever nobler concept of God. “Now I want to know, first, if there is a God; and, if so, what He is, and what His relation is to me. I want to know what I am, and why I am here, and what future I may look forward to, if any. I don’t care two raps about a God who can’t help me here on earth, who can’t set me right and make me happy––cure my ills, meet my needs, and supply a few of the luxuries as well. And if there is a God, and we can meet Him only by dying, then why in the name of common sense all this hullabaloo about death? Why, in that case, death is the grandest thing in life! And I’m for committing suicide right away! But you preacher fellows fight death tooth and nail. You’re scared stiff when you contemplate it. You make Christianity just a grand preparation for death. Yet it isn’t the gateway to life to you, and you know it! Then why, if you are honest, do you tell such rubbish to your trusting followers?”

“I would remind you,” returned Hitt with a little laugh, “that I don’t, now.”

“Well, friends,” interposed Father Waite, “it is to take up for earnest consideration just such questions as Mr. Haynerd propounds, that I have my suggestion to make, namely, that we meet together once or twice a week, or as often as we may agree upon, to search for––” his voice dropped to a whisper––“to search for God, and with this young girl as our guide. For I believe she is very close to Him. The world knows God only by hearsay. Carmen has proved Him.

“Men ask why it is,” he went on, “that God remains hidden from them; why they can not understand Him. They forget that Jesus revealed God as Love. And, if that is so, in order to know Him all mankind must love their fellow-men. But they go right on hating one another, cheating, abusing, robbing, slaying, persecuting, and still wondering why they don’t know God, regardless of the only possible way of ever working out from the evils by which they are beset, if we believe that Jesus told the truth, or was correctly reported.” He paused and reflected for a moment. Then:

“The ancient prophet said: ‘Ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your hearts.’ It is my proposal that we bind ourselves together in such a search. To it we can bring diverse talents. To our vast combined worldly experience, I bring knowledge of the ancient Greek and Latin Fathers, together with Church history. Mr. Hitt brings his command of the Hebrew language and history, and an intimate acquaintance with the ancient manuscripts, and Biblical interpretation, together with a wide knowledge of the physical sciences. Madam Beaubien, Miss Wall, and Mr. Haynerd contribute their earnest, searching, inquisitive spirit, and a knowledge of the world’s needs. Moreover, we all come together without bias or prejudice. And Carmen––she contributes that in which we have all been so woefully lacking, and without which we can never know God, the rarest, deepest spirituality. She is a living proof of her faith. Shall we undertake the search, my friends? It means a study of her thought, and the basis upon which it rests.”

The Beaubien raised her hand to her moist eyes. She was thinking of that worldly coterie which formerly was wont to meet nightly in her magnificent mansion to prey upon their fellows. Oh, how different the spirit of this little gathering!

“You will meet here, with me,” she said in a broken voice. “I ask it.”

There were none there unacquainted with the sorrows of this penitent, broken woman. Each rose in turn and clasped 15 her hand. Carmen threw her arms about her neck and kissed her repeatedly.

“You see,” said the Beaubien, smiling up through her tears, “what this child’s religion is? Would the swinging of incense burners and the mumbling of priestly formulÆ enhance it?”

“Jesus said, ‘Having seen me ye have seen God,’” said Father Waite.

“And I say,” replied the Beaubien, “that having seen this child, you have indeed seen Him.”