She stooped and kissed the little withered face. Looking back it was easy enough to smile, but the agony of many nights when she had lain awake for hours battling with her childish terrors had left a burning sense of anger in Joan’s heart. Poor mazed, bewildered Mrs. Munday, preaching the eternal damnation of the wicked—who had loved her, who had only thought to do her duty, the blame was not hers. But that a religion capable of inflicting such suffering upon the innocent should still be preached; maintained by the State! That its educated followers no longer believed in a physical Hell, that its more advanced clergy had entered into a conspiracy of silence on the subject was no answer. The great mass of the people were not educated. Official Christendom in every country still preached the everlasting torture of the majority of the human race as a well thought out part of the Creator’s scheme. No leader had been bold enough to come forward and denounce it as an insult to his God. As one grew older, kindly mother Nature, ever seeking to ease the self-inflicted burdens of her foolish brood, gave one forgetfulness, insensibility. The condemned criminal puts the thought of the gallows away from him as long as may be: eats, and sleeps and even jokes. Man’s soul grows pachydermoid. But the children! Their sensitive brains exposed to every cruel breath. No philosophic doubt permitted to them. No learned disputation on the relationship between the literal and the allegorical for the easing of their frenzied fears. How many million tiny white-faced figures scattered over Christian Europe and America, stared out each night into a vision of black horror; how many million tiny hands clutched wildly at the bedclothes. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, if they had done their duty, would have prosecuted before now the Archbishop of Canterbury.!

“You’re frightened,” the child continued in a passionate, low voice. “You think that people will talk about you and look down upon you. You oughtn’t to think about yourself. You ought to think only about him and his work. Nothing else matters.” And the big German, again embracing the little Frenchman, had promised, and had sent his compliments to Madame.

“I asked her once,” said the girl, “why she wasted so much work on them. They were mostly only for poor people. ‘One never knows, dearie,’ she answered, with that childish smile of hers. ‘It may be for a little Christ.’” Joan stopped and turned. “Did he send you?” she asked. “It is what I should love,” she answered. “Tell me what to do.” She was not conscious of the low, vibrating tone in which she spoke.