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"What are you going to do with yourself all the holidays?" asked Clare, with a touch of curiosity. Louise had slipped off her chair on to the soft hearthrug, and sat, hugging her knees and staring up at Clare.

"Read," she said briefly, and gave a little gurgle of anticipation.

"All day long?"

"Oh, yes, Miss Hartill. I never get a chance in term time. There's such heaps to read. I'd like to live in a library."

"Yet a peep at the world outside beats all the books that were ever written."

"I wonder." Louise rubbed her chin meditatively against her knees before she delivered herself. "You know—I think the way things strike people is much more interesting than the things themselves. I like exploring people's minds. Do you know?"

"I know," said Clare. She laughed mischievously. "You mean—that what you think I am, for instance, is much more interesting than what I really am."

Louise protested mutely. Her black eyes glowed.

"I daresay you're right, Louise. You wear pink spectacles, you see. I'm quite sure you would be appalled if any one took them off. I'm a horrid person really."

Louise looked puzzled; then the twinkle in Miss Hartill's eyes enlightened her. Miss Hartill was teasing. She laughed merrily.

Clare shook her head.

"It's quite true. I'm an egoist, Louise!"

"It's not true," said Louise passionately. She was on guard in an instant, ready to justify Miss Hartill to herself and the world.

It amused Clare to excite her.

"My good child—what do you know about it?"

"Lots," said Louise, with a catch in her voice. "You're not! You're not!"

"I am." Clare leaned forward, much tickled. She could afford to attempt to disillusion Louise.... Louise would not believe her, but she could not say later that she had not been warned. But at the same time, Clare warmed her cold and cynical self in the pure flame of affection her self-criticism was fanning. "I am," she repeated. "Why do you think I came round to see you to-day?"

Louise looked up at her shyly, dwelling on her answer as if it gave her exquisite pleasure.

"Because—because you knew I was alone, and you hated me to be miserable on Christmas Day."

"You?" Clare's eyebrows lifted for a second, but a glance into the child's candid eyes dispelled the vague suspicion.... Louise and conceit were incompatible. She listened with a touch of compunction to the innocent answer.

"Not me specially, of course. Any one who was down. Only it happened to be me. I think you can't help being good to people: you're made that way." Her eyes were full of wondering admiration.

Clare was touched. She sighed as she answered—

"I wish I were. You shouldn't believe in people, Louise. I came round because—yes, you were a lonely scrap of a schoolgirl, certainly—but there were lots of other reasons. I wanted a walk and I wanted to be amused, and I wanted—and I wanted——" she moved restlessly in her chair, "All pure egoism, anyhow."

"But you came," said Louise.

"To please you, or to punish some one else? I don't know!"

Louise enjoyed her incomprehensibility. She stored up her remarks to puzzle over later. Yet she would ask questions if Miss Hartill were in a talking mood.

"Do I know them?" (She had an odd habit of using the plural when she wished to be discreet.) She wondered who had been punished, and why, and thrilled deliciously, as she did to a ghost story. She thought that it would be terrible to have offended Miss Hartill: yet immensely exciting.... She wondered if all her courage would go if Miss Hartill were angry? She had always despised poor Jeanne du Barrie: but Miss Hartill raging would be harder to face than a mob....

"What have they done?" asked Louise eagerly.

"They? It's your dear Miss Durand," said Clare, with a grim smile. "I'm very angry with her, Louise. She's been behaving badly."

Louise's eyes widened: she looked alarmed and distressed.

"Oh, but Miss Hartill—she hasn't! She couldn't! What has she done?"

"Shall I tell you?" Clare leaned forward mysteriously.

Louise nodded breathlessly.

"She wouldn't copy me and be an egoist. And I wanted her to, rather badly, Louise. There, that's all! You're none the wiser, are you? Never mind, you will be, some day. Don't look so worried, you funny child."

"Why do you call yourself such names? You're not an egoist? You can't be," cried Louise desperately.

Clare laughed.

"Can't I? Most people are. It's not a synonym for murderess! Stop frowning, child. Why, I don't believe you know what it means even. Do you know what an egoist is, Louise?"

"Sir Willoughby Patterne!" said Louise promptly.

Clare threw up her hands.

"What next? I wish I'd had charge of you earlier. You shouldn't try so hard to say 'Humph,' little pig."

"I don't." Louise was indignant.

"Then what possesses you to steer your cockle-boat on to Meredith? Well—what do you think of him? What have you read?"

"About all. He's queer. He's not Dickens or Scott, of course——" Her tone deprecated.

"Of course not," said Clare, with grave sympathy.

"But I like him. I like Chloe. I like the sisters—you know—'Fine Shades and Nice Feeling'——"

"Why?" Clare shot it at her.

"I don't know. They made me laugh. They're awfully real people. And I liked that book where the two gentlemen drink wine. 'Veuve' something."

"What on earth did you see in that?" Clare was amused.

"I don't know. I just liked them. Of course, I adore Shagpat."

"That I understand. It's a fairy tale to you, isn't it?"

"Not a proper one—only Arabian Nightsy."

"What's a proper one, Louise?"

Louise hesitated.

"Well, heaps that one loves aren't. Grimm's and Hans Andersen's aren't, or even The Wondrous Isles. And, of course, none of the Lang books. I hate those. You know, proper fairy stories aren't easy to get. You have to dig. You get bits out of the notes in the Waverley Novels, and there's Kilmeny, and The Celtic Twilight, and The Lore of Proserpine, and Lemprière. Do you believe in fairies, Miss Hartill?"

"It depends on the mood I'm in," said Clare seriously, "and the place. Elves and electric railways are incompatible."

Louise flung herself upon the axiom.

"Do you think so? Now I don't, Miss Hartill—I don't. If they are—they can stand railways. But you just believe in them literaturily——"

"Literally," Clare corrected.

"No, no—literaturily—just as a pretty piece of writing. You'll never see them if you think of them like that, Miss Hartill. The Greeks didn't—they just believed in Pan, and the Oreads, and the Dryads, and all those delicious people; and the consequence was that the country was simply crammed with them. You just read Lemprière! I wish I'd lived then. Miss Hartill, did you ever see a Good Person?"

"I'm afraid not, Louise. But I had a nurse who used to tell me about her grand-aunt: she was supposed to be a changeling."

Louise wriggled with delight.

"Oh, tell about her, Miss Hartill. What was she like?"

"Tiny and black, with a very white skin. They were a fair family. Nurse said they all disliked her, though she never did them any harm. She used to be out in the woods all day—and she ate strange food."

"What?"

"Fungi, and nettle-tops, and young bracken, and blackberries, my nurse said."

"Blackberries?"

"She was Irish; the Irish peasants won't touch blackberries, you know. We're just as bad, Louise. Heaps of fungi are delicious—wait till you've been in Germany. They know what's good: but, then, they won't touch rabbits, so there you are! I expect my nurse's aunt thought us an odd lot, us humans."

"Was she really a fairy?" Louise was breathless.

"How do I know? A witch perhaps. I should think a young witch, by all accounts."

"What happened to her?"

"She was 'swept' on her wedding-day."

"Crossing water?"

"No. She was to marry an old farmer. She went into the woods at dawn to wash in dew, and gather bindweed for her wreath——" She paused dramatically, her eyes dancing with fun; but Louise was wholly in earnest.

"Go on! Oh, go on!"

"She was never seen again."

"Oh, how lovely!" Louise shivered ecstatically. "I wish I'd been her. What did her foster people do?"

"What could they? I think they were glad to be rid of her." (Clare suppressed a certain tall young gipsy, who had figured suspiciously in the original narrative.) "Fairy blood is ill to live with, Louise. I don't envy Mrs. Blake, or Mrs. Thomas Rhymer."

"No. But it's so difficult to live in two worlds at once."

"Shouldering the wise man's burden already?"

"You get absent-minded, and forget—ink-stains, you know, and messages."

"I know," said Clare.

"You see, I have such a gorgeous world inside my head, Miss Hartill: I go there when I'm rather down, here. It's a sort of Garden of the Hesperides, and you are there, and Mother, and all my special friends."

"Who, for instance?" Clare was curious; it was the first she had heard of Louise with friends of her own.

"Well—Elizabeth Bennett, and the Little Women, and Garm, and Amadis of Gaul——"

"Oh—not real people?" Clare was amused at herself for being relieved.

"Oh, but Miss Hartill—they are real." Louise was indignant. "Ever so much more than—oh, most people! Look at Mrs. Bennett and Mamma! Nobody will think of Mamma in a hundred years—but who'd ever forget Mrs. Bennett?"

"Mrs Bennett in the Garden of the Hesperides, Louise?" Clare began to chuckle. "I can't swallow that."

Louise pealed with laughter.

"You should have seen her the other day, with the dragon after her. She'd been trying to sneak some apples, because Bingley was coming to tea."

"Who came to the rescue?"

"Oh, I did." Louise was revelling in her sympathetic listener. "I have to keep order, you know. She was awfully blown, though. Siegfried helped me."

"I wish I could get to fairyland as easily as you do."

Louise considered.

"I don't. My country is only in my head. Fairyland must be somewhere, mustn't it? Do you know what I think, Miss Hartill?"

"In patches, Louise."

Louise blushed.

"No, but seriously—don't laugh. You know you explained the fourth dimension to us the other day?"

"That I'm sure I never did." Clare was lying back in her chair, her arms behind her head, smiling inscrutably.

"Oh, but Miss Hartill——"

"Never, Louise!"

"Oh, but honestly—I'm not contradicting you, of course—but you did. Last Thursday fortnight, in second lesson."

"I wish you were as accurate over all your dates, Louise! Your History paper was not all that it should be."

"It's holidays, Miss Hartill! But don't you remember?"

"I explained to you that the fourth dimension was inexplicable—a very different thing."

"The Plattner Story explains it—clearly." Louise's tone was distinctly reproachful.

"Oh no, it doesn't, Louise. Mr. Wells only deludes you into thinking it does."

"Well, anyhow, I think—don't you think that it's rather likely that fairyland is the fourth dimension? It would all fit in so beautifully with all the old stories of enchantment and disappearances. Then there was another book I read about it. The Inheritors——"

"Have done, Louise! You make me dizzy. Don't try to live exclusively on truffles. If you could continue to confine your attention to books you have some slight chance of understanding, for the next few years, it would be an excellent thing. Neither Meredith nor the fourth dimension is meat for babes, you know."

"I like what I don't understand. It's the finding out is the fun." Louise looked mutinous.

"And having found out?"

"Then I start on something else."

Clare considered her.

"Louise, I don't know if it's a compliment to either of us—but I believe we're very much alike."

Louise gave a child's delighted chuckle, but she showed no surprise.

"That's nice, Miss Hartill." She hesitated. "Miss Hartill, did you know my Mother?"

"Mrs. Denny?" Clare hesitated.

Louise gave an impatient gesture.

"Not Mamma. My very own Mother."

"No, my dear." Clare's voice was soft.

Louise sighed.

"No one does. There are no pictures. Father was angry when I asked about her once: and Miss Murgatroyd—she was our governess—she said I had no tact. I miss her, you know, though I don't remember her. I had a nurse: she told me a little. Mother had grey eyes too, you know," said Louise, gazing into Clare's. "I expect she was rather like you."

She watched Clare a little breathlessly. There was more of tenderness in her face than many who thought they knew Clare Hartill would have credited, but no hint of awakening memory, of the recognition the child sought. She went on—

"People never come back when they're dead, do they?" She had no idea of the longing in her voice.

"No, you poor baby!" Clare rose hastily and began to walk up and down the room, as her fashion was when she was stirred.

"Never?"

"'Stieg je ein Freund Dir aus dem Grabe wieder?'" murmured Clare.

"What, Miss Hartill?"

"Never, Louise."

Louise's thistledown fancies were scattered by her tone. Impossible to discredit any statement of Miss Hartill's. Yet she protested timidly.

"There was the Witch of Endor, Miss Hartill. Samuel, you know."

"Is that Meredith?" said Clare absently. Then she caught Louise's expression. "What's the matter?"

"But it's the Bible!" cried Louise horrified.

Clare sat down again and began to laugh pleasantly.

"What am I to do with you, Louise? Are you five or fifty? You want to discuss Meredith with me—(not that I shall let you, my child—don't think I approve of all this reading—I did it myself at your age, you see) and five minutes later you look at me round-eyed because I've forgotten my Joshua or my Judges! Kings? I beg your pardon; Kings be it! Never mind, Louise. Tell me about the Witch of Endor."

"Only that she called up Samuel, I meant, from the dead."

Louise was evidently abstracted; she was picking her words.

"Don't you believe it, Miss Hartill, quite?"

"It's the Old Testament, after all," temporised Clare. She began to see Louise's difficulty. She had no beliefs herself but she thought she would find out how fourteen handled the problem.

"Then the New is different? There was Dorcas, you know, and the widow's son. That is all true, Miss Hartill?"

Clare fenced.

"Many people think so."

"I want to know the truth," said Louise tensely. "I want to know what you think." She spoke as if the two things were synonymous.

Clare shook her head.

"I won't help you, Louise. You must find out for yourself. Leave it alone, if you're wise."

"How can I? I've been reading——"

"Ah?"

"The Origin of Species—and We Two."

Clare's gravity fled. She lay back shaking with laughter.

"Louise, you're delightful! Anything else?"

Louise pulled up her footstool to Clare's knee.

"Miss Hartill, I've been reading a play. It's horrible. I can't bear it, though it was thrilling to read——"

Clare interrupted.

"Where do you get all these books, Louise?"

"They are all Mother's, you know. Nobody else wants them. And then there's the Free Library."

Clare shuddered. She would sooner have drunk from the tin cup of a public fountain than have handled the greasy volumes of a public library.

"How can you?" she said disgustedly. "Dirt and dog-ears!"

Louise opened her eyes. She was too young to be squeamish.

"'A book's a book for a' that,'" she laughed. "How else am I to get hold of any—that I like?"

Clare jerked her head to the lined walls.

"Help yourself," she said.

Louise was radiant.

"May I? Oh, you are good! I will take such care. I'll cover them in brown paper."

She jumped up and, running across the room, flung herself on her knees before the wide shelves. Timidly, at first, but with growing forgetfulness of Clare, she pulled out here a volume and there a volume, handling them tenderly, yet barely opening each, so eager was she for fresh discoveries. She reminded Clare of Alice with the scented rushes. Clare was amused by her absorption, and a little touched. The child's attitude to books hinted at the solitariness of her life: she relaxed to them, greeting them as intimates and companions; there was a new appearance on her; she was obviously at home, welcomed by her friends; a very different person to the shy-eyed, prim little prodigy her school-fellows knew.

Clare, glancing at her now and then, sympathised benevolently, and left her to herself; she understood that side of the child; her remark to Louise about the resemblance between them had not been made at random; she was constantly detecting traits and tastes in her similar to her own. She was interested; she had thought herself unique. Their histories were not dissimilar; she, too, different as her environment had been, could look back on a lonely, self-absorbed childhood; she, too, had had forced and premature successes. They had not been empty ones, she reflected complacently; she had used those schoolgirl triumphs as stepping-stones. She doubted if Louise could do the same: there was something unpractical about Louise—a hint of the visionary in her air. She had at present none of Clare's passion for power and the incense of success. Clare, quite aware of her failing, aware that it was a failing and perversely proud of it, yet hoped that she should not see it sprouting in the character of Louise. She hated to see her own defects reproduced (ineffably vulgarised) in others; it jarred her pride. The discovery of the resemblance between herself and Louise amused and charmed her, as long as it was confined to the qualities that Clare admired; but if the girl began to reflect her faults, Clare knew that she should be irritated.

She considered these things as she sat and sewed. She was an exquisite needlewoman. The frieze of tapestry that ran round the low-ceilinged room was her own work. Alwynne had designed it—a history of the loves of Deirdre and Naismi some months before, when she and Clare had discovered Yeats together; and Clare had adapted the rough, clever sketches, working with her usual amazing speed. The foot-deep strips of needlework and painted silk, with their golden skies and dark foregrounds, along which the dim, rainbow figures moved, were just what Clare had wanted to complete her panelled room; for she was beauty-loving and house-proud, though her love of originality, or more correctly her tendency to be superior and aloof, often enticed her into bizarrerie. But the Deirdre frieze was as harmonious as it was unusual; and Clare, as she daily feasted her eyes on the rich, mellow colours, was only annoyed that the idea of it had been Alwynne's. That fact, though she would not own it, was able, though imperceptibly, to taint Clare's pleasure. She was quite unnecessarily scrupulous in mentioning Alwynne's share in the work to any one who admired it; but it piqued her to do so, none the less. If any one had told her that it piqued her she would have been extremely amused at the absurdity of the idea.

She was at the time working out a medallion of her own design, and growing interested, she soon forgot all about Louise, sitting Turkish fashion at the big book-case. The light had long since faded and the enormous fire, gilding walls and furniture, rendered the candles' steady light almost superfluous. Candlelight was another predilection of Clare's—there was neither electricity nor gas in her tiny, perfect flat. The tick of the clock in the hall and the flutter of turning pages alone broke the silence. Outside, the snow fell steadily.

Half-a-mile away Alwynne Durand, drumming on the window-pane, while her aunt dozed in her chair, thought incessantly of Clare, and was filled with restless longing to be with her. She tried to count the snowflakes till her brain reeled. She felt cold and dreary, but she would not rouse Elsbeth by making up the fire. She wished she had something new to read. She thought it the longest Christmas Day she had ever spent.

The neat maid, bringing in the tea-tray, roused Clare. She pushed aside her work and began to pour out; but Louise in her corner, made no sign.

Clare laughed.

"Louise, wake up! Don't you want any tea?"

Louise, as if the conversation had not ceased for an instant, scrambled to her feet and came to the table, a load of books in her arms, saying as she did so—

"I'll be awfully careful. May I take these, perhaps?"

Clare nodded.

"Presently. I'll look them over first. Muffins?"

She gave Louise a delightful meal and taught her to take tea with a slice of lemon. She was particular, Louise noticed; some of the muffins were not toasted to her liking, and were instantly banished; she criticised the cakes and the flavouring of the dainty sandwiches; then she laughed wickedly at Louise for her round eyes.

"What's the matter, child?"

"Nothing," said Louise, embarrassed.

"I believe you're shocked because I talked so much about food?"

Louise blushed scarlet.

"I like eating, Louise."

"Yes—yes, of course," she concurred hastily.

Clare was entertained. She knew quite well that Louise, like all children, considered a display of interest in food, if not indelicate, at least extremely human. She knew, too, that in Louise's eyes she was too entirely compounded of ideals and noble qualities to be more than officially human. She enjoyed upsetting her ideas.

"If you come to actual values, I'd rather do without Shakespeare than Mrs. Beeton," she remarked blandly.

"Oh, Miss Hartill!" Louise was protesting—suspecting a trap—ready to ripple into laughter. "You do say queer things."

"I?"

"Yes. As if you meant that!"

"But I do! Eating's an art, Louise, like painting or writing. I had a pheasant last Sunday——" She gave the entire menu, and enlarged on the etceteras with enthusiasm.

Louise looked bewildered.

"I never thought you thought about that sort of thing," she remarked. "I thought you just didn't notice—I thought you would always be thinking of poetry and pictures——" She subsided, blushing.

Clare laughed at her pleasantly.

"I thought, I thought, I think, I thought! What a lot of thoughts. I'm sorry, Louise! Is all my star-dust gone?"

Louise shook her head vigorously, but she was still embarrassed. She changed the subject with agility.

"I've read that!"

"What?"

"The star-dust book—but I've picked out two others of his. May I? All these?"

Clare ran her finger along the titles.

"Yes—yes—Fiona Mcleod—yes—Peer Gynt—yes, if you like, you won't understand it, or Yeats—but all right. No, not Nietzsche! Not on any account, Louise."

Louise protested.

"Oh, why not, Miss Hartill? I'm nearly fourteen."

"Are you really?" said Clare, with respect.

"He looks so jolly—Old Testamenty——"

"He does, Louise! That's his little way. But he's not for the Upper Fifth."

"He's in the Free Library," said Louise, with a twinkle. Clare turned.

"You can have all the books you want, if you come to me. But no more Free Library, Louise. You understand? I don't wish it."

Louise tingled like a bather under a cold spray. She liked and disliked the autocratic tone.

Clare went on.

"I detest trash—and there's a good deal, even in a Carnegie collection. There's no need for you to dull your imagination on melodrama like—what was it?"

"What, Miss Hartill?"

"The play you began to tell me about—you thought it horrible, you said."

Louise opened her eyes.

"Miss Hartill, it wasn't melodrama—it was good stuff. That's why it worried me. It's by a Norwegian or a Dane or some one. Pastor Sang it's called."

"That? I don't follow. I should have thought the theology would have bored you, but there's nothing horrible in it."

"It worried me. Oh, Miss Hartill, what does it all mean? Darwin says, we just grew—doesn't he? and that the Bible's all wrong. But you say that doesn't matter—it's just Old Testament? And this play says—do you remember? the wife is ill—and the husband, who cures people by praying—he can't cure her——"

"Well?" said Clare impatiently.

"And he says, if the apostles did miracles, we ought to be able to—he kills his wife, trying. He can't, you see. But the point is, if he couldn't, with all his faith—could the apostles? And if the apostles couldn't, could Christ Himself? The miracles are just only a tale, perhaps?"

"Perhaps," said Clare. "You're not clear, Louise, but I know what you mean."

"It frightened me, that play," said the child in a low voice. "If there were no miracles—and everything one reads makes one sure there weren't—why, then, the Bible's not true! Jesus was just a man! He didn't rise? Perhaps there isn't an afterwards? Perhaps there isn't God?"

"Perhaps," said Clare.

The child's eyes were wide and frightened. She put her hand timidly on Clare's knee.

"Miss Hartill—you believe in God?"

Clare looked at her, weighing her.

Louise spoke again; her voice had grown curiously apprehensive.

"Miss Hartill—you do believe in God?"

Clare shrugged her shoulders.

Louise stared at her appalled.

"If you don't believe in God——" she began slowly, and then stopped.

They sat a long while in silence.

Clare felt uncomfortable. She had not intended to express any opinion, to let her own attitude to religion appear. But Louise, with her sudden question, had forced one from her. After all, if Louise had begun to doubt and to inquire, no silence on Clare's part would stop her.... Every girl went through the phase—with Louise it had begun early, that was all.... Yet in her heart she knew that Louise, with her already overworked mind, should have been kept from the mental distress of religious doubt.... She knew that for some years she could have been so kept; that, as the mouth can eat what the body will not absorb, so, though her intelligence might have assimilated all the books she chose to read, her soul need not necessarily have been disturbed by them. Her acquired knowledge that the world is round need not have jostled her rule of thumb conviction that it is flat. Her interest in 'ologies and 'osophies could have lived comfortably enough, with her child's belief in four angels round her head, for another two or three years—strengthening, maturing years.

Clare knew her power. At a soothing word from her, Louise would have shelved her speculations, or at least have continued them impersonally. Clare could have guaranteed God to her. But Clare had shrugged her shoulders, and Louise had grown white—and she had felt like a murderess. Do children really take their religion so seriously?... After all, what real difference could it make to Louise?... She, Clare, had been glad to be rid of her clogging and irrational beliefs.... Louise, too, when she recovered from the shock, would enjoy the sense of freedom and self-respect.... If Louise talked like a girl of eighteen she could not be expected to receive the careful handling you gave a child of twelve.... Anyhow, it was done now....

Suddenly and persuasively she began to talk to Louise. She touched gently on the history, the growth and inevitable decay of all religions—the contrasting immutability of the underlying code of ethics, upon which they, one and all, were founded. She told her vivid little stories of the religious struggles of the centuries, had her breathless over the death of Socrates, nailed up for her anew the ninety-five theses to the Wittenberg church door. Exerting all her powers, all her knowledge, all her descriptive and dramatic skill, to charm away one child's distress, Clare was, for an hour, a woman transformed, sound and honey-sweet. Against all that happened later, she could at least put the one hour, when, remorsefully, she had given Louise of the best that was in her.

Incidentally, she delivered to her audience of one the most brilliant lecture of her career. Later she wrote down what she remembered of it, and it became the foundation for her monograph on religions that was to become a minor classic. Its success was immediate—that was typical of Clare—but she never wrote another line. That also was typical of Clare. It bored her to repeat a triumph.

She soon had Louise happy again: it was not in Louise to stick to the high-road of her own thoughts, with Miss Hartill opening gates to fairyland at every sentence. Clare kept her for the rest of the evening, and took her home at last, weighed down by her parcel of books, sleepy from the effects of excitement and happiness. She poured out her incoherent thanks as they waited on the doorstep of her home. There had never been such a Christmas—she had never had such a glorious time—she couldn't thank Miss Hartill properly if she talked till next Christmas came.

Clare, nodding and laughing, handed her over to the maid, and went home, not ill-pleased with her Christmas either. She thought of the child as she walked down the snowy, star-lighted streets, and wondered whimsically what she was doing at the moment. Would she say her prayers on her way to bed still, or had Clare's little, calculated shrug stopped that sort of thing for many a long day? She rather thought so. She shook off her uneasy sense of compunction and laughed aloud. The cold night air was like wine to her. After all, for an insignificant spinster, she had a fair share of power—real power—not the mere authority of kings and policemen. Her mind, not her office, ruled a hundred other minds, and in one heart, at least, a shrug of her shoulders had toppled God off His throne; and the vacant seat was hers, to fill or flout as she chose.