"No," she said bluntly, "I don’t think I believe in God at all now, though it sometimes seems as though there must be Somebody behind things!—Somebody who punishes—Somebody who laughs! As for a religion, I don’t suppose I’ve ever had one. Oh, yes!—my religion is Aunt Lynette!" A mental picture of Lynette, years ago in the Harley Street nursery, teaching a curly-headed baby Bawne to say his evening prayer, while a great galumphing girl stood in the doorway and looked and listened, rose up and brought with it the horrible choking sensation. She fought with it as Sherbrand said: "I think you are speaking of Mrs. Saxham? Well, one must have a star to hitch one’s waggon to. And she is a star—if ever I saw one! A woman with a face like a Donatello Madonna, or a tall lily growing in the garden-cloisters of some Italian mountain-convent, and who has the Faith,—ought to be able to teach you to believe in God! Why not ask her? I once knelt in a Church near her, and saw her praying. She seemed—very close to what Norman or someone else called the Eternal Verities." "She will be nearer still," said Patrine with sudden, savage roughness, "if anything happens—if Bawne is killed! She will die of a broken heart!" "Then why not pray," argued Sherbrand, "that she may get him back again? Why not try it? There’s nothing else that helps so well!" "Pray!" The tall girl stopped short and swung round on him, facing him. A moment since they had walked like lovers. Now the spell was broken—at all events, for the time. "Pray—pray!" she mocked. "Am I a sneak?—to pray when I don’t believe in prayer! And if I did believe, God—if He exists—would not hear me. Even the parsons own He has His favourites. I am not one of them.... I am one of His forgets!" *CHAPTER XL* *MACROMBIE IS SACKED* Tall, lithe, vigorous, masterful, they confronted each other across the gulf that suddenly opened between them—the bottomless chasm that yawns between Faith and Unbelief. In the fitful uncanny light, the darker side of Patrine started into sinister prominence. Her defiant face was masked by shadow, but the fierce vibrating voice and towering shape had something of the fallen angel. Had wide sable pinions sprung and bannered from her shoulders, Sherbrand would hardly have been surprised. "Let us draw the line at that. If we are to be friends—and I would like us to be!—agree to it! But since you have what I have not—you would call it Faith, no doubt," he guessed the wide mouth curving in a jeering smile, "there is nothing to prevent _you_ from praying for Aunt Lynette and for Bawne too! Unless you are the kind of physician who draws the line at taking his own drugs!" If she had thought to disconcert Sherbrand she erred. He said instantly: "I give you my word of Honour that I will pray for them! But there is one other person much dearer to me than either. You don’t ask me for _her_, but all the same..."