“Is it settled yet?” asked Joan. “Are they going to make room for him in the Cabinet? He ceased speaking. No one seemed inclined to break the silence.!

“Don’t give me ideas above my station,” laughed Joan. “I’m a journalist.” She forced a laugh. “Oh, I only persuaded him to do what he had made up his mind to do,” she explained. “It was all settled.”

“I see your argument,” she said. “The more I love you, the deeper will be the fountain. So that the more Love I want to come to me, the more I must love you.” Joan’s present lay on the table near to her, as if she had just folded it and placed it there: the little cap and the fine robe of lawn: as if for a king’s child. 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.