“How does one know when one is serving God?” she asked after a pause, apparently rather of herself than of Joan. “It seems so difficult.” “Damned if I know,” answered Mr. Simson, with a burst of candour. “Can’t help it, I suppose. Lost me job again.”!

The ticking of the little clock was filling the room. The thing seemed to have become alive—to be threatening to burst its heart. But the thin, delicate indicator moved on. There he should have stopped. It would have been a good note on which to finish. But it seemed there was another point he wished to make. Even to the sinner Calvary calls. To Judas—even to him the gates of the life-giving Garden of Gethsemane had not been closed. “With his thirty pieces of silver he could have stolen away. In some distant crowded city of the Roman Empire have lived unknown, forgotten. Life still had its pleasures, its rewards. To him also had been given the choice. The thirty pieces of silver that had meant so much to him! He flings them at the feet of his tempters. They would not take them back. He rushes out and hangs himself. Shame and death. With his own hands he will build his own cross, none to help him. He, too—even Judas, climbs his Calvary. Enters into the fellowship of those who through all ages have trod its stony pathway.”

“Yes,” she answered. “Will you be coming alone?” “Ever spent a day at the Home for Destitute Gentlewomen at East Sheen?” demanded Madge. “Nice little restaurant, this,” she said. “One of the few places where you can depend upon not being annoyed.”