"The cord breaks at the last by the weakest pull."—Old Spanish Proverb. At one point in pain, all sense of value dies. Nothing is left but the overwhelming realization that, throb by throb, it will increase until it reaches the climax, when a woman bites her pillow to stifle her shrieks, and a man in all probability blows out his brains—the shortest way of escape. To the woman there succeeds what may be called reaction, a temporary lull, in which body, mind and soul are alike so bruised and stricken that, possibly from sheer weariness, sleep may come for a brief hour. But next day the pain begins again and concentrates again, and so on and on from day to day and week to week, the only change being that soul and mind and body become daily a little more bruised, a little more stricken. This is worse than a mere period of spiritual dryness; it is an active wrestling with the powers of hell. It is in such moments that religion fails, and the faith to which one was born seems to spell restriction. One would prefer to fling it away altogether, to deny its truth, to escape to a world where the light of the heart might give out its full radiance, even if the soul shrank in gloom. Doubts creep in in such moments of peril. Catholics do not mince matters. They do not expect to cheat God in their lives and the devil in their deaths by tardy repentance. If they sin, they risk eternal damnation, and know it. The description of a picture she had once seen had often been in Evelyn’s thoughts lately. God sat in judgment on His throne. Before Him was ranged a tribe of kneeling figures—kings laying down their sceptres, soldiers their swords, queens their jewels, men their symbols of ambition, women their guerdons of beauty. Some hung back as though unwilling to give up so soon all that was pleasant. In the foreground of the picture knelt a young girl’s shrinking form. Her eyes, mystical and reverent, were looking at the throne; she held one hand bravely outstretched, but the other was concealed within the drapery of her gown. In the hand that pointed direct to God there was the half of a little human heart, her own, all that she had to give, for the other half was withheld. Amongst so vast a crowd of worshippers she thought that perhaps God might not see the gift she offered was divided. Torn with conflict, every energy, every force concentrated on one prevailing thought, the daily routine of her life temporarily suspended, what had Evelyn now to give God? Little pitiful utterings of prayer, the mechanical moving of lips to the rhythm of habitual words—that was all. Yet, after all, what proof had she that what she had been taught in childhood was true?—Think of the bitterness that would come, if at the end of life, when the secrets of all are revealed, we were to find that we had given up love, in bitterness and agony, for the sake of a phantom God and a phantom creed....