"Yes," said Marion, "and failed." She forced herself to say that much. How _could_ Eurie go through with all these details? "If her heart had ached as mine does, she couldn't," Marion told herself. She might have known if she had used her judgment that Eurie's heart was not of the sort that would ever ache over anything as hers could; and yet Eurie was bitterly disappointed. She had counted on Nell, and expected him, had high hopes for him; and here they were dashed into nothingness! Who knew that he could be so obstinate over a trifle? Surely it was a trifle just to come to prayer-meeting once! She knew she would have done it for him, even in the days when it would have been a bore. She did not understand it at all. Meantime, Ruth had been having her experiences. This promise of hers troubled her. Perhaps you cannot imagine what an exceedingly disagreeable thing it seemed to her to go hunting up somebody to go to prayer-meeting with her. Where could she turn? There were so few people with whom she came in contact that it would not be absurd to ask. Her father she put aside at once as entirely out of the question. It was simply an absurdity to think of asking him to go to prayer-meeting! He rarely went to church even on the Sabbath; less often now than he used to do. It would simply be annoying him and exposing religion to his contempt; so his daughter reasoned. She sighed over it while she reasoned; she wished most earnestly that it were not so; she prayed, and she thought it was with all her heart, that God would speak to her father in some way, by some voice that he would heed; and yet she allowed herself to be sure that his only and cherished daughter had the one voice that could not hope to influence him in the least. Well, there was her friend, Mr. Wayne. I wonder if I can describe to you how impossible it seemed to her to ask him to go? Not that he would not have accompanied her; he would in a minute; he would do almost anything she asked; she felt as sure that she could get him to occupy a seat in the First Church prayer-room that evening as she felt sure of going there herself; but she asked herself, of what earthly use would it be? He would go simply to please what he would suppose was a whim of hers; he would listen with an amused smile, slightly tinged with sarcasm, to all the words that would be spoken that evening, and he would have ready a hundred mildly funny things to say about them when the meeting closed; for weeks afterward he would be apt to bring in nicely fitting quotations gleaned from that evening of watchfulness, fitting them into absurd places, and making them seem the veriest folly--that would be the fruit.