She stared at me, a curious expression in her stupid eyes. It seemed to me as though the ‘woman’ in her revolted, while yet she dared not suffer her grim belief to trip. That is, she would willingly have had it otherwise but for a terror that prevented. ‘We may pray for them, sir, and we do--we _may_ ‘ope.’ She dropped her eyes to the carpet. ‘Good, good!’ I put in cheerfully, sorry now that I had spoken at all. ‘That’s more hopeful, at any rate, isn’t it?’ She murmured something about Abraham’s bosom, and the ‘time of salvation not being for ever,’ as I tried to pass her. Then a half gesture that she made stopped me. There was something more she wished to say--to ask. She looked up furtively. In her eyes I saw the ‘woman’ peering out through fear. ‘Per’aps, sir,’ she faltered, as though lightning must strike her dead, ‘per’aps, would you think, a drop of cold water, given in His name, might moisten----?’ But I stopped her, for the foolish talk had lasted long enough. ‘Of course,’ I exclaimed, ‘of course. For God is love, remember, and love means charity, tolerance, sympathy, and sparing others pain,’ and I hurried past her, determined to end the outrageous conversation for which yet I knew myself entirely to blame. Behind me, she stood stock-still for several minutes, half bewildered, half alarmed, as I suspected. I caught the fragment of another sentence, one word of it, rather--‘punishment’--but the rest escaped me. Her arrogance and condescending tolerance exasperated me, while I was at the same time secretly pleased that I might have touched some string of remorse or sympathy in her after all. Her belief was iron; she dared not let it go; yet somewhere underneath there lurked the germ of a wholesome revulsion. She would help ‘them’--if she dared. Her question proved it. Half ashamed of myself, I turned and crossed the hall quickly lest I should be tempted to say more, and in me was a disagreeable sensation as though I had just left the Incurable Ward of some great hospital. A reaction caught me as of nausea. Ugh! I wanted such people cleansed by fire. They seemed to me as centres of contamination whose vicious thoughts flowed out to stain God’s glorious world. I saw myself, Frances, Mabel too especially, on the rack, while that odious figure of cruelty and darkness stood over us and ordered the awful handles turned in order that we might be ‘saved’--forced, that is, to think and believe exactly as _she_ thought and believed.