"Now see how gracefully the ship will surmount it," said Gregory, smiling. "O dear!" said she, sighing, "if we could only rise above our troubles in the same way!" Then, feeling that she had touched on delicate ground, she hastened to add, "This boundless waste increases my old childish wonder how people ever find their way across the ocean." "The captain is even now illustrating your own teaching and practice in regard to the longer and more difficult voyage of life," said Gregory, meaningly. "He is 'looking up'--taking an observation of the heavens, and will soon know just where we are and how to steer." Annie looked at him wistfully, and said, in a low tone, "I was so glad to learn, last evening, that you had taken an observation also, and I was so very grateful, too, that you had the courage to defend our faith." "I have to thank you that I could do either. It was really you who spoke." "No, Mr. Gregory," she said, gently, "my work for you reached its limit. God is leading you now." "I try to hope so," he said; "but it was your hand that placed in mine that by which He is leading me. He surely must have put it into your heart to give me that Bible. When I reached my cheerless rooms in New York I felt so lonely and low-spirited that I had not the courage to go a single step further. But your Bible became a living, comforting presence from that night. What exquisite tact you showed in giving me that little worn companion of your childhood, instead of a new gilt-leaved one, with no associations. I first hoped that you might with it give me also something of your childhood's faith. But that does not come yet. That does not come." "It will," said she, earnestly, and with moistened eyes. "That, now, is one of my dearest hopes. But after what I have been, I am not worthy that it should come soon. But if I perish myself I want to try to help others." Then he asked, in honest distrustfulness, "Do you think it right for one who is not a Christian to try to teach others?" "Before I answer that question I wish to ask a little more about yourself;" and she skilfully drew him out, he speaking more openly in view of the question to be decided than he would otherwise have done. He told of the long evenings spent over her Bible; of his mission work, and of his honest effort to deal justly with all; at the same time dwelling strongly on his doubts and spiritual darkness, and the unspent influences of his old evil life. The answer was different from what he expected; for she said: "Mr. Gregory, why do you say that you are not a Christian?" "Because I feel that I am not." "Does feeling merely make a Christian?" she asked. "Is not action more than feeling? Do not trusting, following, serving, and seeking to obey, make a Christian? But suppose that even with your present _feeling_ you were living at the time of Christ's visible presence on earth, would you be hostile or indifferent, or would you join His band even though small and despised?"