“You never knew I thought of things like this, did you? “My dear dear, I who am so frivolous think of yet deeper things. And I would speak of them to you tonight, for I would have you know my heart and mind as, dearest (how dear to think!), you know my face. Yes, of deeper things. I suppose clever people would laugh at the religion my mother and father lived in, taught me, died in, and now is mine. They believed--and I believe--in what I have heard called the Sunday School God! the God who lives, who listens, and to whom I pray. I have read books attempting to shatter this belief--yes, and I think succeeding because written with a cunning appeal only to the intelligence of man. Can such a Being as God exist? they ask. And since man's intelligence can only grasp proved facts, proofs are heaped upon proof that He cannot. The impossibilities are heaped until man must--of his limitations--cry that it is impossible. But in my belief God is above the possibilities--not to be judged by them, not to be reduced to them. I suppose such a belief is Faith--implicit Faith--the Faith that we are told makes all things possible. Well, fancy, for the sake of having a 'religion' that comes into line with 'reason,' abandoning the sense of comfort that comes after prayer! Fancy receiving a 'reasoned' belief and paying for it the solace of entreating help in the smallest trouble and in the largest! “Do you know, my dear dear, that I pray for you every night?--for your health, your happiness, and your success? “Now you know a little more of me. Is there more to learn, I wonder? Not if I can make it clear. “The candle is in a most melancholy condition: in the last stage of collapse. I have prodded it out from its socket with my knife and set it flabbily on a penny--so it must work to its very last drop of life. That will not be long delayed. I shall suddenly be plunged into darkness and must undress in the dark. I shall be smiling all the time I am undressing, my thoughts with you. “At eleven--ten minutes' time--I am to be leaning from the window gazing at Orion as you too--so we agreed--will be gazing. Each will know the other has his thoughts, and we will say 'good-night.' How utterly foolish! How contemptibly absurd, common!--and how mystically delightful! You and I with Orion for the apex of eye's sight and our thoughts flying from heart to heart the base! “Georgie mine, if we had never met could we have ever been so happy? Impossible! Impossible! Before I pray for you to-night, I thank God for you. “I have kissed the corner where I shall just be able to squeeze in--good-night.” Such was her letter-disloyal to women in its exposure of those truths of women's love which are theirs by the heritage of ages, by their daily training from childhood upward, and against which they should most desperately battle; simple in its ideas of religion; silly in its baby sentiment. Such was my Mary. CHAPTER V. Beefsteak For 14 Palace Gardens. I.