"Alwynne," he said. "You've got to listen to this, just this. You say I'm not to talk about your friend, that I don't know her--that I'm unjust. But listen, at least, to this. I won't be unfair. I'll grant you that she was fond of the little girl, and meant no harm, no more than you did. But you say yourself that she was miserable till you relieved her mind by taking all the blame on yourself. Can't you conceive that in so doing you did assume a burden, a very real one? Don't you think that her fears, her terrors, may have haunted you as well as your own? I believe in the powers of thought. I believe that fear--remorse--regret--may materialise into a very ghost at your elbow. Do you remember Macbeth and Banquo? Do you believe that a something really physical sat that night in the king's seat? Do you think it was the man from his grave? I think it was Macbeth's thoughts incarnate. He thought too much, that man. But let's leave all that. Let's argue it out from a common-sense point of view. You said you believed in God?" "Yes," she said. "And the devil?" "I suppose so." "Well--I'm not so sure that I do," he remarked meditatively. "But if I do--I must say I cannot see the point of a God who wouldn't be more than a match for him: and a God who'd leave a baby in his clutches to expiate in fire and brimstone and all the rest of the beastliness----Well, is it common sense?" he appealed to her. "If you put it like that----" she admitted. "My dear, would you let Louise frizzle if it were in your hands? Why, you've driven yourself half crazy with fear for her, as it is. Can't you give God credit for a little common humanity? I'm not much of a Bible reader, but I seem to remember something about a sparrow falling to the ground----Now follow it up," he went on urgently. "If Louise's life was so little worth living that she threw it away--doesn't it prove she had her hell down here? If you insist on a hell. And when she was dead, poor baby, can't you trust God to have taken charge of her? And if He has--as He must have--do you think that child--that happy child, Alwynne, for if God exists at all, He must exist as the very source and essence of peace and love--that that child would or could wrench itself apart from God, from its happiness, in order to return to torment you? Is it possible? Is it probable? In any way feasible?" Alwynne caught her breath. "How you believe in God! I wish I could!" Roger flushed suddenly like an embarrassed boy. "You know, it's queer," he confided, subsiding naïvely, "till I began to talk to you, I didn't know I did. I never bother about church and things. You know----" But Alwynne was not attending. "Of course--I see what you mean," she murmured. "It applies to Louise too. Why, Roger, she was really fond of me--not as she was of Clare--of course--but quite fond of me. She never would have hurt me. Hurt? Poor mite! She never hurt any one in all her life."