Constance laughed easily. "She's coming around," she replied as though she were used to discussing her private affairs with Patricia. "She is so pleased with my altar-piece in All Saints that she's ready to forgive me anything. Auntie is really awfully good." Patricia was alight at once. "Your altar-piece, Constance?" she cried. "Oh, how splendid! When did you do it? Why didn't you tell me about it sooner? Where is it now?" Constance laughed, yet she was deeply gratified, for she had been more drawn to Patricia than to any of the others. "It's in All Saints, of course, where it should be. You didn't think it was in the Bandbox or the Comique, did you?" she bantered. "Auntie paid for it, and so she's privileged to criticise, you know." "Do let me see it," begged Patricia. "I haven't a thing to do this afternoon. Let's go and see it." Constance demurred at first and then gave in. "The air will do us good, anyway," she said, "We've been cooped up here for an hour or more." Patricia found the altar-piece a revelation of another side of Constance--a side she had not dreamed of, and she gave it the tribute of silence for a long five minutes. Then she spoke very softly: "I know now why you believe in bearing the everyday toil and trouble of the world. It's because you've been painting that. Why, Constance, it's--it's--_triumphant_." Constance was looking at the painting and she forgot she was not speaking to herself alone. "And why not?" she said in a deep breath. "He didn't fear that poverty and pain would keep anyone out of the kingdom of gladness. It was what He was telling them all the time--those exclusive, rich men who wanted to get the secret of His serene life. It wasn't that He liked pain and poverty, but He wanted everyone to know that it was the fear of them that shut people out of the kingdom of gladness. Why shouldn't He look triumphant when He'd opened the door so wide?" Patricia was too much stirred by this revelation of the depths of Constance's nature to speak, and they soon went out of the dim church into the sunlight of the avenue, with its roar of hungry life and surging energies. "I think I'll run over to Auntie's now that we're so near," said Constance at the next corner. "You don't mind, do you?" Patricia didn't in the least mind. She wanted to go for a walk in the Park and try to catch and put in order the whirling thoughts that pulsed through her. "I'll see you tonight after dinner," she promised. The Park was full of people. The spring was in the air. Patricia felt strange sensations, stirring thoughts which Constance's picture had called into life. "The Kingdom of Gladness," she repeated over and over again, making it a rhythmic march to keep step with. "The Kingdom of Gladness. And I thought Constance Fellows just a nice, clever, funny girl!"