“I’m so awfully sorry,” he said. “I’ve been talking to you as if you were a public meeting. I’m afraid I’m more used to them than I am to women. Please forgive me.” He had lost interest in politics.!

Joan shot a glance from over her cup. The poor puzzled face was staring into the fire. Joan could almost hear him saying it. “We are but poor men,” he said. “What can we do? Of what use are such as we?”

He raised his eyes to hers. The shadow that, to her fancy, had always rested there seemed to have departed. A light had come to them. It was Mrs. Munday, poor soul, who all unconsciously had planted the seeds of disbelief in Joan’s mind. Mrs. Munday’s God, from Joan’s point of view, was a most objectionable personage. He talked a lot—or rather Mrs. Munday talked for Him—about His love for little children. But it seemed He only loved them when they were good. Joan was under no delusions about herself. If those were His terms, well, then, so far as she could see, He wasn’t going to be of much use to her. Besides, if He hated naughty children, why did He make them naughty? At a moderate estimate quite half Joan’s wickedness, so it seemed to Joan, came to her unbidden. Take for example that self-examination before the cheval glass. The idea had come into her mind. It had never occurred to her that it was wicked. If, as Mrs. Munday explained, it was the Devil that had whispered it to her, then what did God mean by allowing the Devil to go about persuading little girls to do indecent things? God could do everything. Why didn’t He smash the Devil? It seemed to Joan a mean trick, look at it how you would. Fancy leaving a little girl to fight the Devil all by herself. And then get angry because the Devil won! Joan came to cordially dislike Mrs. Munday’s God. He had no qualms about arguing with his uncle.