Something in the gleam of the eyes under Richard King’s tangled eyebrows was a revelation to Marion. She knew his secret. She would keep it. Roger was stupid, he would never guess. But how could she keep it from Judith? Poor little Judith, was she growing up to have a love story? To-night Marion did not like love stories. She wished the tall girl with the serious eyes and braided hair were a little girl with long curls. “Did _you_ get a letter from Don to-night?” Roger asked. “Yes.” “How do you like it?” “I—think I like it. It will not make any difference to me—only the difference that it hasn’t made.” “A good distinction,” remarked Richard King. “May I go upstairs, Marion?” “Surely—your room has been waiting for you as the Holy Land waited for the Israelites to return from their captivity; nobody spoiled either, or occupied either.” “Mine was not seventy years,” said Judith, “although sometimes it seemed like it.” Marion did not follow her; it would not be an easy thing to talk to Judith about Don’s marriage; she was relieved that the only view the girl would take of it would be in regard to the difference it made to herself. When Judith returned, feeling as much at home as though she had been away but for a night, Marion was matching silks for her work, and the gentlemen were talking, sitting opposite each other in the bay window. It had been so long since she had heard Roger talk; that “talk” was one of the delights of her parsonage life. She had heard him preach but once during her stay at Aunt Affy’s. “That point about praying came up,” Mr. King was saying, “and I am not satisfied with the answer I gave. The man gave his experience—it was an experience of years—and then he asked me what was the matter with his prayer, and I decidedly did not know. I know he has fulfilled the conditions, praying in faith, and in the name of Christ, and the thing prayed for was innocent in itself. He said, ‘What _is_ the matter with me?’ and I could not tell. He went away unsatisfied. I went down on my knees, you may be sure, thinking something was the matter with _me_ because I had no illumination for him.” Roger’s strong, brown hand was stretched along the arm of his chair; he looked down at his fingers in deep thought. “He said he had been praying months to learn if the petition in itself were not acceptable to God, and had, he thought, studied a hundred prayers in the Bible, comparing his prayer with the acceptable and unacceptable prayers of the old saints.” “He is determined to get at the bottom of it,” said Roger. “I never saw a man more determined. I quoted Phillips Brooks to him: ‘You have not got your answer, but you have got God.’” “He was not satisfied with that getting?” “No. He said he knew he should not be satisfied until he had God’s answer to himself. I think he has almost lost sight of the thing he was anxious for when he began to pray. It has been worth a course in theology to him.”