“Rod made the design; he calls me Holly,” said Cis proudly. “He’s a great Rodney!” “Has he come back to the Church to thank God for you where He should be thanked?” asked Miss Gallatin softly. “I want to be sure of your happiness, my dear.” “Dear me, no, he hasn’t, Miss Gallatin!” Cis laughed, but she spoke impatiently. “He is so good as it is, that I’m sure he’s all right. I can’t seem to worry over Rod!” “You’ve got to build your house square with its foundation, if it’s to stand,” said Miss Gallatin. “Dear Cis, I do hope you’ll be happy; be blessed, which is more. I suppose it may be that you’re to be the torch bearer, lead G. Rodney Moore to heaven. God sees farther than we can! Did you like Mr. Lancaster?” “Who’s Mr. Lancaster? Oh, that man downstairs? He seems all right, plays like a dream, though I always think it is a little queer for a man to play the piano. Isn’t he sort of religious-crazy? All right to be a Catholic, but you can’t keep at it all the time, as if it was a hurdy-gurdy and the pennies would stop if you stopped grinding it!” Cis laughed at herself, and gathered up her gloves, ready to go. “Oh, my child, can’t you see the difference between grinding at a thing and being permeated with it?” cried Miss Gallatin. “You don’t grind at the thought of Rod; you feel him, you breathe him, though you are not consciously thinking of him. So it is with the love of God; God is, and you exist in Him; there is nothing that is not of Him in all your actions and thoughts, though it may be only that His presence is beneath it all, not conscious every instant to your mind. Thus Anselm Lancaster loves God.” Cis stopped short in her passage to the door, and stared silently for a moment at Hannah Gallatin. Then she said slowly: “I never stop thinking of Rod; he is ceaselessly before my eyes; I breathe him, not air. Do you mean to say that anyone ever feels like that to God, to _God_, Whom you do not see, Who is--well, far off, not part of us, just--Oh, how shall I say it? Just _God_, heard about in church, not very well known?” “Who is ‘just God.’ You said it well, poor Cis. Who is our Beginning, our End, in Whom ‘we live, and move and have our being’; Saint Paul answered you before you asked your question. I mean that He is loved in that way by many, and that unless you share in that love to a degree, all other love will fail you, and life be wretched in its course and in its end,” said Miss Gallatin solemnly. Cis stared at her for another instant, then she turned to go. “I never once thought that piety meant that,” she said. “Yet of course God is what you say. It’s quite nice; I never thought I liked piety much. Perhaps if you hang on tight when you don’t get it, God lets you get it later on. But you must hang on awfully tight when you don’t feel like hanging, I suppose! Well, I certainly don’t get it now! Thanks, Miss Gallatin. And thanks for the dinner and nice evening.”