I closed my eyes and shuddered. We clung to each other and tried to pray. Then I found out that they were speaking to us. I could not understand all that they said, but I understood enough to know that they wished us to abjure our religion. We were to deny Christ, and fall down and worship their horrible idols. If we did this, they promised us our lives. It was a deadly temptation. Lilian thought of her husband, and I thought of father; and we were young, and life was sweet, and it was so horrible to die without saying good-bye to anyone. Perhaps people in England will wonder and blame us that it was a temptation to us at all, but I heard Uncle Paul say once that temptation was not sin: that it only becomes sin when we yield. They say that times of great persecution are times of decision, too. I had not cared much for Christ in the old days; I had not been like Uncle Paul or Cicely—I had been careless and thoughtless; but now, with a cruel death staring me in the face, now, I chose Him. I turned to Lilian. "Christ for me," I said, in reply to her questioning look, and all my heart seemed on fire and my soul to be full of love. Lilian had made the choice also—I read the answer on her face before she spoke. Terribly frightened as I was, I gazed at her in the keenest admiration; her beautiful hair had become loosened, and now fell over her shoulders in a mass of gold; her lovely starlight eyes, pure and steadfast as those of any pictured saint, were fixed on our persecutors. "Nina," she said to me in a whisper, "I do not know whether they would allow us to take that poison, but even if it were possible I think it would be better not to do so. We are in God’s hands, and they cannot touch a hair of our heads until He gives them permission." "Yes," I replied, "I agree with you—it’s difficult, of course, to know if a thing is right or wrong now, but Uncle Paul would not have done it. I will follow him." They seemed to be making some horrid preparations at the other end of the room—our time had come; we felt that and prepared to die. It’s all very well to read about these things in a story, but unless you have passed through it yourself, you can have no idea of the horror and fear and deadly anticipation of coming woe which we felt. I was positively sick with terror, but I also felt full of an overwhelming love—I knew that Christ was worth all and more than all. I whispered to Lilian that it would soon be over, and a text came running into my mind, "Our light affliction which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." They seemed to have completed their preparations now, and came toward us with horrid cries. "Oh, Lilian, do pray that we may be kept." "Yes, yes, darling, it will soon be over, and then the glory."