A happy little sparrow chirped upon the window sill, and some children ran across the street bare-headed, exulting in the soft air. All was innocence and sweetness. Mind and morals are greatly influenced by weather. Many things seem right in the fog and gloom, which we know to be wrong in the clear light of a sunny morning. The events of the previous day came back to Joy’s mind as she stood by the window, and stirred her with a sense of strangeness and terror. The thought of the step she had resolved to take brought a sudden trembling to her limbs. It seemed to her the eyes of God were piercing into her heart, and she was afraid. Joy had from her early girlhood been an earnest and sincere follower of the Christian religion. The embodiment of love and sympathy herself, it was natural for her to believe in the God of Love and to worship Him in outward forms, as well as in her secret soul. It was the deep and earnest fervour of religion in her heart, which rendered her music so unusual and so inspiring. There never was, is not and never can be greatness in any art where religious feeling is lacking. There must be the consciousness of the Infinite, in the mind which produces infinite results. Though the artist be gifted beyond all other men, though he toil unremittingly, so long as he says, “Behold what I, the gifted and tireless toiler, can achieve,” he shall produce but mediocre and ephemeral results. It is when he says reverently, “Behold what powers greater than I shall achieve through me, the instrument,” that he becomes great and men marvel at his power. Joy’s religious nature found expression in her music, and so something more than a harmony of beautiful sounds impressed her hearers. The first severe blow to her faith in the church as a divine institution, was when her rector and her lover left her alone in the hour of her darkest trials, because he knew the story of her mother’s life. His hesitancy to make her his wife she understood, but his absolute desertion of her at such a time, seemed inconsistent with his calling as a disciple of the Christ. The second blow came in her dismissal from the position of organist at the Beryngford Church, after the presence of the Baroness in the town.